Write The Future
by thegreatroshen
Summary: Celeste D. Faerun, better known as Fae, knows every story except her own. But honestly? That's fine. If she has nowhere to go, that means she gets to stay with the Fairy Tail Guild. Who needs a past when you have a future this bright?
1. A Little Fairy

**A/N: Welcome, one and all, to a new adventure! Again, I own literally nothing. This story was written by my sister and Beta'd by me. Fairy Tail and all characters except Fae belong to Hiro Mashima. But on to the story! There will be tears! Laughter! Confusion! And great balls of fire, all courtesy of Natsu. Enjoy!**

-vVv-

Natsu burst through the guild hall doors, carrying a limp bundle in his arms.

"MASTER!" The usual rambunctious entrance hadn't gotten any attention, but Natsu's panicked tone and the noticeable scent of blood had.

"Natsu?" The Dragonslayer raced towards Makarov, Happy flying at his shoulder, breathing heavily.

"We found her while we were doing our last job, master! She's hurt really bad! Natsu kicked those jerk's tails to the moon, but they already got to her, what do we do!?" Makarov flicked back the blanket Natsu had thought to wrap her in.

A young face was revealed, a girl with a noticeable touch of sun to her skin though she was looking pale and uncomfortable. Her eyes were closed and she was feverish. Aqua hued fuzz covered her roughly shaved scalp, interrupted by a clean white bandage around her head.

"She was fine while we were walking back from the station, then she just fell unconscious and we couldn't wake her up again!" The Dragon Slayer's arms were shaking as he held onto the injured child, a panicked look in his eyes. "We gotta help her, Gramps! I promised we'd help her!" Makarov held up his hand to forestall the worried wizard.

"And we will Natsu. Reedus!" He barked at Art mage who rarely left the guild hall. "We need transport to Porlyusica. Jet! Run ahead and inform her of the situation. We'll follow as soon as we are able. Hurry!"

-vVv-

That is what I am told was my introduction to the Fairy Tail guild members. I don't remember any of it. I don't remember much of anything before waking up in Porlyusica's house with a splitting headache and the buzz of something unfamiliar under my skin. It had itched incessantly, unbearably and nothing I did could make the damn sensation stop! Apparently I had repeatedly tried to scratch my arms open in my sleep trying to relieve myself from the irritating sensation. Then, when I did wake up, it was with a moment of panic when I didn't recognize my surroundings. I gazed at the pink haired woman with frightened eyes, my heart racing with confusion when I not only didn't recognize her, but that I didn't...feel right.

 _Was the world always this big?_

"Oh, calm down." The healer grumbled at me. I then registered with a flare of panic that I was also tied down. "You were constantly attempting to hurt yourself, don't look at me like that." I paused, wondering how I had known she was a healer.

 _Porlyusica. The Edolas alternate version of Grandine the Sky Dragon._ The information was just...there, floating in my head.

"Wh...Where am I?" I was shaking with the effort to not burst into tears, something told me that this woman, while not begrudging me that luxury, would certainly not appreciate it.

"In my home. We are about fifteen miles away from the city of Magnolia." I looked at her blankly, not recognizing any of it.

"Who brought me here?" I got the impression she didn't get out much. By her own choice. She seemed to take note of the question, turning towards me.

"You're not going to ask what happened to you?" I shook my head.

"You don't know that." I replied, somehow certain that she didn't. Her brows rose.

"You are correct. I do not. You were brought here by the Fairy Tail wizard guild. One of their members came across you being attacked and came to your defense. Unfortunately, you had already been injured. The locals patched you up as best as they could and he brought you back to his guild and then to me for further treatment." _Fairy Tail._ The words rang strangely in my head. Fond exasperation and bemusement welling up inside of me despite the fact that I had no memories to connect to the emotions. It was pretty much the biggest sense of deja vu I could ever remember having...

 _Wait...Oh no..._

"One more question." I said slowly, trying not to shake. "I...I don't think you'll know the answer but..."

"Just ask, girl. And we'll see if I know the answer." The woman said patiently, comparatively speaking as she sat down by my sickbed. I looked at her earnestly, fully aware how young and lost I looked and sounded...and trying even more not to cry as the horrifying realization crept over me.

"Who am I?"

-vVv-

Porlyusica watched the sleeping, nameless child, exhaling softly. With the extent of the injuries on her, both physical and magical, she ought to have expected some sort of side effects. It had been an encouraging sign that she was lucid, capable of speaking and understanding what she heard. But this...

The poor girl didn't look more than six or seven years old. And she had no idea who she was or where she came from.

Her hands tightened briefly and her nostrils flared with a fierce protective rage that swept through her.

No child should ever have that look of hopeless despair.

The hermit-healer picked up the lacrima that she had accepted for the sole purpose of informing Makarov and his guild that their foundling had woken. The young Fire Dragon Slayer and his flying cat had come by every day in person to visit the unconscious girl and speak to her. They had often been accompanied by the Ice Make Wizard and Erza Scarlet. Those three might bicker like broody chimera, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that they were among the best of friends in the guild. Their support of Natsu's attachment to the helpless child showed that. And they always brought greetings and word from the rest of the guild, telling the sleeping girl about people she had never met before and they way they lived and laughed together.

-vVv-

" _And then the stripper over here-" The Dragon Slayer's story cut out as the Ice Wizard attempted to strangle him._

" _Oi! What's the big idea with calling me a stripper in front of a kid, you flaming idiot!?"_

" _It's what you are. I don't want her to get confused, Ice-brain! Now shut up, you're ruining the story!"_

" _You've already done that, you're not telling it right! I wasn't even there, bastard!" There came a loud, piercing clang as Erza smacked both of them._

" _Quiet down, Natsu! Gray, no cursing in front of a child!"_

 _Porlyusica hid a small smile as the odd quartet bickered over the sleeping girls' bedside. They were a rowdy bunch. She hardly would tolerate that kind of behavior in a normal situation. She glanced down at the lacrima she had linked to the girl in order to keep track of her heart rate, circulation and brain activity._

 _All of them were growing steadily stronger the longer and louder the visiting wizards were. What's more..._

" _Hey guys, she's smiling!" Happy cried, flitting over her head delightedly. "I bet she can hear us!" The three humans paused and saw that Happy was right. The girl lay with a distant, warm smile on her face, all other signs indicating that she was still fast asleep._

 _Erza was the first to break the silence._

" _Of course she can hear us...I hope we're not disturbing you." She addressed the sleeping girl gently, her usual manner softening somewhat. "All we want to do is see you wake up. Feel free to tell these idiots off then."_

" _Hey come on! We're making her smile! We've gotta be doing something right!" Happy's voice piped up again._

" _I bet she's thinking that you're all a bunch of idiots!"_

"Porlyusica?" Makarov's face appeared in the crystal, his voice coming through the magical link as well as a myriad of shouting and the usual hubbub that accompanied that guild. "What's the news- FOR GOODNESS SAKE WOULD YOU IDIOTS SHUT UP!?" He roared at someone she couldn't see, his eyes flashing with his Titan magic.

There was finally a semblance of quiet. Everyone in the guild hall was listening intently for the update.

"The child has woken up and has suffered no physical damage from her trauma." The cheers from the other end warmed some cold part deep inside her. _It took so little for them to accept her._ She thought of the girl in the bed behind her. _They don't know anything about her, but they still welcome news of her recovery with such joy..._ But Makarov had caught onto her wording.

"Porlyusica...what is it?" He sounded grave and serious. Like a Ten Wizard Saint instead of the doddering, friendly old man he usually portrayed himself as. .

"While she is looking to make a full recovery, there is something that I cannot do for her... And that is heal her mind. The girl has no notion of who she is or where she came from. She recalls nothing before waking up in my house. I've examined her thoroughly, and there is no indication I can see of why she is like this. Whatever put her in the state she was in when you brought her to me was jarring and painful enough for her to suppress the memory of the event and all other events previously in her life. She cannot even remember her own name."

-vVv-

It was weird.

There was no other apt way of describing it. I could move, but only with much trembling and uncertainty. I kept on misjudging the length of my limbs, resulting in my tripping over air and jamming my fingers and toes against various pieces of furniture.

"Ergh!" I clutched my hand after banging it painfully on one of the railings I was using to learn how to walk again, glowering at the offending appendage.

"Getting frustrated will not help you." Porlyusica said sternly as she caught sight of my glare. "After four weeks of not eating solid foods and being as weak as you were before, it's a miracle you are capable of walking at all." I heard her chastisement to be careful and grateful with a nod of the head.

"Yes ma'am..." I then grasped the rails she had set up for, taking the struggling route from one side of the room to another.

It said something terrible about my stamina that I could only manage a few passes of this before shakily sitting down to try and recuperate. My legs felt like overcooked noodles and my arms weren't much better.

 _That...isn't right._ I hadn't felt this shaky on my feet since...

 _When?_ A frustrating gap reared up in my memory again. A distinct feeling of swaying and pain behind my left ear, stabbing into my brain.

"A flash?" Porlyusica asked, her quick eyes seeing my hand automatically cupping my ear, still ringing with phantom pain. I lowered my hand, nodding.

"I think something happened to my ear once." She hummed thoughtfully, brow furrowing in what would have been a stern and somewhat intimidating manner if...If I didn't know that that was just her thinking face.

"I did find a thin scar just on the line of where your ear meets your head. It's completely healed though and precise enough that I can deduce it was a deliberate incision instead of an injury."

"About how old was it?" I asked, breathing deeply to ready myself for the next pass of the room on the rails.

"Several years, At least five. It's barely visible at all anymore." I ran my finger over the thin line thoughtfully, wishing as I often did nowadays that I wasn't an amnesiac.

So much of myself was gone, erased from my life as cleanly and fully as if someone had whitewashed it. No color, no connection, just a vague white landscape of emptiness and distant emotion. I felt blank. Like I didn't fit in this small body, or in this world at all. This very plainly wasn't the same as I had once thought it was. The speed of my recovery said that either my idea of what was normal needed redefining, or this world was in dire need of having it's reality checked.

My question to Porlyusica about this had actually gotten the stern woman to crack a smile.

" _Are physics laws or suggestions?"_

" _A basic framework."_ Something that encircled the world, but could be pushed and prodded here and there to suit whim or need.

 _We think of them as more like...guidelines._ The gruff voice floated up from the corner of my whitewashed mind and I eagerly followed it, rather starved for something to do as my body recovered.

And there I found a story.

A place in a hot southern sea with a daring blacksmith turned pirate, a wealthy noble's daughter and an utterly mad, perpetually drunk captain. I had a story in my head about the various (mis)adventures of pirates in 'the Caribbean'. Porlyusica had said that no such ocean existed, at least not by that name.

So I had either made the whole thing up, or someone else had and I had to find the rest of the story.

I was in the midst of trying to decided Sparrow, 'Captain' Jack Sparrow, was like this because of his constantly inebriated state, or if he was just yanking everyone's chain for the hell of it when I heard shouting from outside.

"I do believe your visitors are underway." The pink haired healer said dryly. "Prepare yourself, girl. Fairy Tail can be rather overwhelming."

-vVv-

Overwhelming was one way of putting it, that was certain.

Natsu was a loud fire breathing Dragon Slayer with a sidekick in the form of a flying blue cat, Happy, who was obsessed with fish. Grey was an Ice Wizard with no proper concept of temperature or body modesty and Erza was worse than both of them put together, a temperamental Requip Wizard capable of storing and copying any item of clothing or weaponry in her arsenal with her dense, powerful magic.

They argued a lot, got into fights, had poor manners, weren't all that bright and generally were total nuisances.

So why couldn't I stop laughing at their antics?

I was watching Gray and Natsu try to pummel each other, both my hands clasped over my mouth as their insults got steadily more and more creative until Erza intervened with brutal chops to their heads.

"Keep your language clean, idiots!" She snapped. "I will not have you sullying our guild reputation with your foul language!"

"Right, cause you're Miss Manners yourself..." Gray muttered.

"What was that!?" She roared at him, making the younger boy flinch away from her wrath. I started to laugh.

"Are they always like this?" I asked Happy, who had seated himself close by and was devouring a fish he had pulled out of his little satchel.

"Mmhm! Mmph! Phometimes' bhey're worse!" He said with his mouth full. Thankfully the fish was relatively fresh so I wasn't subjected to a faceful of old aquatic breath.

"Happy, don't speak with your mouth full!" Erza scolded. "You're a Fairy Tail wizard too, you have to think about what you're actions are doing to our guild reputation!" I raised my hand.

"Oh. Yes?" Erza looked surprised that I had silently asked to speak instead of just blurting something out.

"Which would be better? A good impression or an honest impression?" The question seemed to throw her for a loop. But Natsu laughed boisterously, slinging an arm around me and lifting me onto his shoulder effortlessly.

"An honest one! Who cares if people don't like you? Better that they know you and don't like you than like someone who doesn't exist!" I squeaked at the sudden change in height, grabbing for something to steady myself. I settled for bracing myself on his opposite shoulder and his hand.

"What are you doing?" I asked him curiously as he headed for the door.

"Didn't Porlyusica tell ya? We came to take you to our guild! Everyone wants to meet you!"

-vVv-

When Natsu entered the guild hall with a little aqua haired girl on his shoulder, several people were looking on with interest.

"Hey everyone! This is her! Meet our little friend!" Makarov watched as one by one, his guild-children came forward to meet the nameless child. She seemed rather taken aback at the attention, but she bloomed in the light of the family that was being offered her. Soon her smile and her laugh joined the usual sounds of the guild and Makarov smiled as he took a deep draft from his mug.

Another child for him to protect and love.

One of the first questions of the hour that was brought up was what to call her since she didn't have a name that she could remember. Thus the afternoon's events were decided in the process of proposing a wide variety of names for her consideration. She would then choose one and that would be her name. Makarov had decided to register her citizenship for Magnolia and keep an eye on her a she grew up. But seeing how effortlessly she merged with his guild, and how Porlyusica had notified him that she had an active magical core...he supposed a little new blood would be beneficial, even if she was too young to take a guild-mark by his rules.

They had been proposing names for several hours, the girl was seated firmly between Gray and Lisanna as others gathered around their group.

"Marissa?"

"That sounds like a butterfly."

"Larel?"

"No thanks."

"Natsu!" She blinked.

"Um...that name's already taken. Happy, why would you-?"

"No, Natsu stop eating my fish!" Everyone had a good laugh as they watched cat and Dragon Slayer have an impromptu tug of war with Happy's fish, that Natsu had quickly cooked and attempted to swallow whole. She blinked at the sight, clearly wondering how Happy was managing to put up a good fight for his lunch when he was barely a fourth the size of his friend...

"Won't he choke?"

"Natsu's mouth waaaay too big for that to be a risk." Macau assured their young guest.

"Yeah, I've seen him swallow a whole steak in one go!" She watched the pair tussle for a moment longer, then she reached over the table and tugged on his wrist, her eyes distant and curious.

"If you eat food raw, does it cook on the way down your throat?" Natsu had apparently not considered this as he let go of the fish he had stolen to consider it.

"I don't know...Let's try it!" Natsu had grabbed her and raced for the bar, calling for the barmaid. "Heeeey Sara! I need some food that hasn't been cooked yet!" The poor girl's feet smacked Gray in the face as Natsu hauled her along.

"Ow! Sorry Gray!" Erza rose to intercept the enthusiastic boy with her fist.

"Sit down Natsu! You can't be so rough with her! She hasn't been awake for more than a few days!"

In the end, it took several days for the girl to decide on a name that she liked. It took Makarov's telling of Mavis and her founding of the guild to inspire her.

"Fae..." She mused.

The guildmaster nodded, surprised.

"Yes, that is an ancient name for fairy. How do you know that?" Her eyes looked distant, a bright pale blue that seemed to glow slightly.

"I read it...Somewhere. I can't remember where..."

"You like reading then?" Some hint of her past would help. But the big bright smile that the question got him was surprising anyway.

"I love reading!" Natsu moaned upon hearing that.

"Come on! How am I supposed to teach you how to be cool if you like lame stuff like that?!"

"There's nothing lame about reading Natsu!" Levy flared up in defense of her preferred hobby, putting an arm around the other girl's shoulders. "I think it's great that someone else finally likes to read around her." She confided. "Everyone else has been too busy with jobs, drinking or eating." Jet and Droy, who always tended to follow Levy around like puppies, spoke up as well.

"That's right!"

"It's great that Levy has a little sister now!"

"Who said anything about little sister?" Levy asked, surprised and a little suspicious. "And what is up with you two lately? You could never agree on anything before." Makarov chuckled behind his mustache.

Puberty had crept up slowly on some of his children, but on others, it had fallen like rain from the sky. Jet and Droy through a mutual agreement, had put aside their usual quarrels in effort to win Levy's heart. A fairly fruitless effort since the sensible girl had no real interest in anything that wasn't printed on a page at the moment.

"I want my name to be Fae." The aqua haired girl declared, a smile on her face as she looked at Makarov.

"Little short for a full on name." Gray remarked. He was promptly smacked by Cana.

"Oh hush, there's nothing wrong with having a short name. If it's what she wants then who cares if it's short?"

"Should it be longer?" Fae asked, looking at Wakaba for some advice. He shrugged.

"Fae does sound more like a nickname." She pondered this for a moment longer...then nodded.

"Ok, Faerun will be my full name, but everyone in the guild had better call me Fae!" This firm declaration brought on a round of chortles. Lisanna scooped the small girl up into a tight embrace.

"Sure thing, Fae-chan!"

"You still need a last name and possibly a middle one as well."

Fae stared into the distance for a moment..

"Celeste D. Faerun." She said finally.

There were several bemused smiles in regards to her choice, but the paperwork was filed and thus; Celeste D Faerun became an official ward of the Fairy Tail wizard guild.

 **Edited 3/9/2019 - Corrected some spelling mistakes**


	2. Acclimation to Madness

I was questioned several times about my name. I said it sounded pretty, but never gave further information.

 ** _Celeste, root, Latin. Meaning, 'celestial' or 'heavenly.'_**

 ** _Faerun, a name for a fictional land also called The Forgotten Realms. This location includes Icewind Dale, Mithril Hall, Waterdeep and the Silver Marches. All settings in which the story of Drizzt Do'Urden the drow take place, among many others. Abbreviated nickname: Fae. A name for the race of fairy creatures, traditionally incapable of speaking lies or touching iron. Very frequently portrayed as clever, long lived and masters unto themselves._**

 **' _D'. An initial from the Grand Line that designates the bearer as the inheritor of a formidable will to change the world._**

The blue glow in my mind had given me the names and their meanings. I had simply strung them together to suit myself. I somehow knew that it was both completely normal and unfamiliar to introduce yourself with your family name being said first.

I had asked about this glow the next day, and was informed by various guild members that it meant I had magic, and what's more, that I had already unlocked it. They speculated that it had happened sometime during my imprisonment or during Natsu's rescue. Now I just had to find what had triggered it and repeat it deliberately.

All things considered, I had a pretty good life for an orphan. The Rune Knight's process for determining how old I was indicated my magical core had been active for about five months and that I was physically seven years old. With the guild's reputation, there had been no real issue with my being supported and sheltered by them and the paperwork had been finished and finalized in a surprising short amount of time.

The ward system for wizard guilds was a way for local guilds to take some of the pressure off of local orphanages and to train young mages in a safe, or at least understanding environment. Young mages tended to have...accidents that couldn't be so easily explained away to most of the population. A child with magic was usually brought to the closest wizard's guild to learn how to control their power at the very least, even if they never chose to expand on it or become combat mages.

This meant I had Makarov overseeing my study of the art with several of the other guild members helping out every now and then.

Natsu had taken a shine to me and insisted on teaching me to fight. In his opinion, any wizard worth their salt should be able to fight without their magic if the need arose, a policy Erza was in strong agreement with. Their training sessions usually ended with me being carried back to the guild hall or the guild dorms, exhausted and bruised, but happy, laughing and looking forward to an evening of magical study punctuated with watching a brawl or two.

"Magic is the result of your own energy interacting and working with the ethernano in the world around you." Makarov said patiently as I fiddled with the hat he insisted I wear during lessons. The long bunny ears were tickling my back... _Why does it matter if I'm wearing some sort of animal hat?_

"Because no two wizards are the same, their capability and talent for magic with be as unique as they are."

"But both Erza and Bisca use Requip magic." I pointed out, head on my folded arms as I listened to him speak. I kept a weather eye on his mug of alcohol. Apparently regular booze didn't do it for wizards so there was a certain family that specialized in brewing a fruity colored drink that was potent enough for people with ethernano running through them to enjoy. A fresh shipment of the stuff had recently been brought in and the party was already underway. I was keeping my head low to avoid the occasional UFO coming my way. Happy had already sailed over my head twice to save his precious fish.

"Quiet down you morons!" Makarov roared as a stool went by overhead. "Ah, but not to the same extent." The guild master said cheerfully. "Erza's magic is incredibly dense and powerful, and is mostly rooted in metal. This combination results in her being able to requip any article she is wearing instead of only a weapon like most are able to do. However, it took her an incredible amount of effort to learn to extend her power to apply to non-metal objects, which is why her usual outfit includes a breastplate. Bisca, on the other hand, doesn't have nearly as much power, but she doesn't have a particular root. So while she might not be able to do as much Re-quiping as Erza, she doesn't have the same restrictions on what she can store in her sub-space. It also allows her to make use of guns that don't rely on her personal magic for power, or to potentially cut back on luggage expenses!" The tiny old man said with a gale of laughter at his joke, adding another layer of noise to the chaos inside the guild hall.

I hummed, tracing a finger on the table before me as I laid the new information out in my mind.

"So Erza can store a lot of armor and weapons, but can't hold onto much else without practicing. Bisca can hold onto a wider variety of materials, but not as much of it. "

"I knew you were a bright kid." He cheered, downing his mug and lifting it with a shout. "Oi! I need a refill." I rose and grabbed his arm, a little panicked and worried at the spots of color on his face.

"Master, you've already had six! You drink any more and you won't be able to make any sense! You have to finish teaching me!"

I lost that fight. I was rather irritated as I sulked at a table while Makarov danced on what had previously been our impromptu school room.

"Drunk and it isn't even dinner time..." I muttered. "Talk about an adult example..."

-vVv-

I still hadn't had an actual instance of my natural magic showing itself. The way it had been described was that whatever magic I was most suited to would manifest as an instinctive reaction to something. Thus far, my only reactions had been shown in the development of good reflexes since Natsu apparently thought that attacking me randomly would be a good way to get my magic to emerge. I was hiding under the table from him while Gray passed me bread from above.

"Why does he have to be so loud..." I moaned, covering my ears as I heard the Dragon Slayer start another fight. The Ice Wizard made a noncommittal sound as he passed a cup down from above.

"He wouldn't be Natsu if he was quiet." A loud crash made him add as an afterthought. "Though that might be a good thing."

-vVv-

"Fae, come back here! We haven't finished training yet!" Erza called, sounding irked.

"Nooooo!" Screw dignity! I want to live to see my eighth birthday!

 _She's a demon...A witch in disguise!_

-vVv-

I watched the fighting with Levy.

"So who do you think is gonna win this time?" I asked the older girl, our perusal of some magic books halted by the spectacle. Mira and Erza, Natsu and Gray. The rivals had paired off and were currently attempting to murder one other.

"Whoever manages to intervene and survive." Levy replied glibly.

"So...Master wins?"

"Master wins."

-vVv-

Eventually, of course, I met some of the more reclusive Fairy Tail members. While I was reading a book on magical theory one afternoon, I suddenly felt the suggestion to close my eyes and rest. I rebelled. I only had an hour to finish reading this book and I would not be deterred! A notebook lay nearby with my scribbles filling up the current page.

 _This theory about the ethernano being a semi sentient, omniscient being makes a lot of sense. How else would Archive Magic work? If you could only access what information you put up, then it would hardly be worth much of anything because you'd always need to find it concretely somewhere else. But no. If you troll the pool enough, refine your search criteria and have the capacity to handle the size of the files, you can find just about anything on any kind of information. The Rune Knights monitor it closely for the most part, but Archive Magic users aren't typically strong enough or common enough to make it much of a valid concern._

It was the lack of hubbub that made me finally look up. I stared in amazement at the others in the room who had fallen asleep right where they were standing. Natsu had his face implanted in a bowl of stew that would probably start another fight once he woke up demanding to know who had thrown his food at him. But...what had happened? Why was everyone asleep?

I spotted Master was awake and he didn't seem that perturbed. And there was a stranger as well... He was tallish, had a bunch of staves slung behind him and wore a mask and hood. I could barely see the red lines of a tattoo or birthmark on his face, just where his eyes showed.

"Um...master?" I asked, cursing my soft and childish voice as it broke the almost complete silence. Both of them turned to look at me, surprise evident on the face I could actually see.

"Fae? You're awake?" I rolled my eyes.

"No, I'm sleeping with my eyes open and talking at the same time." The tiny old man's brows went down as he glared at me.

"None of your sass now!"

"Too late for that." I replied pertly, looking up at the masked man and rubbing my head. "Is it you who's trying to make me go to sleep? It's kinda annoying. Would you mind not doing that?" The man was, simply put, baffled.

Makarov sighed.

"I suppose we don't know enough about your magic to have predicted that this might happen. Fae, this is Mystogan, one of our S-class wizards." As soon as I had confirmation that he was a friend, I hopped off my stool and bowed, shooting him a bright smile as information poured into my head.

 _ **Banished prince of Edolas. Real name: Jellal. Conceals his real face due to an inordinate and awkward similarity to Ten Wizard Saint Siegrain. Read: He's physically his identical twin in just about every way. No innate magic, but very skilled at using magical tools, seems to have a particular inclination towards staves.**_

"Nice to meet you, Mystogan! I'm Faerun, but everyone just calls me Fae!" He seemed to have recovered somewhat from his confusion at my being awake and apparently unaffected by his sleep spell.

"A pleasure, Fae." I tilted my head as I drew a little closer.

"Why are you wearing a mask? Is it a foreign fashion trend? Or is it just comfortable? Or was your face burned by acid or something?"

I grilled the poor guy about everything and ended up following him until he left town. I asked him about magic, the places he'd travelled to, what kind of jobs he took and why, what magical aids were in place to keep weather from being a problem to travellers. Anything I could think of really. But I don't think he disliked me for it. In fact, he seemed remarkably patient about the whole affair. I even thought he smiled behind his mask from the way his eyes crinkled.

 _I like you._ I decided, smiling up at him as he explained the distinction between a few different classes of magical tools, and their general advantages. _You're weird, but everyone in this guild is. And I like you._ I gave into my impulse and hugged him before saying goodbye.

"Come back soon!" I told him, grinning mischievously. "I'll probably have a lot more questions when you do!" I saw his eyes crinkle up in a smile.

"I'll try my best to find the answers for you then."

-vVv-

I was indulging an old hobby (At least, I knew I liked doing it, so I assumed it was an old hobby.) when I discovered exactly what my magic was.

I was writing out a synopsis of everything I could remember of Lord of the Rings, by hand in a notebook since typing machines weren't a thing in a messy guild hall with lists and lists of property damage bills.

I had been horrified to realize that many of the classic stories and concepts that I found cliche and overused...Weren't. They weren't overused. They were barely used!

 _Alas._ I bemoaned as I continued to scribble frantically. _I haven't the mental capacity to match the great Professor Tolkien's linguistic skills to really make the story come to life._ And a world without Lord of the Rings was a true and utter travesty. Just don't ask me why I felt like this. I just knew that it was.

My lips curved up as images assailed my mind of the story. From the glories of the Last Homely House, to the dark, balrog haunted depths of the Mine of Moria, the Golden Hall of the Rohirrim, the Paths of the Dead, the Black Gate of Mordor, Minas Tirith, and the fiery, tumultuous peak of Mount Doom.

"Fae! Whatever you're doing, don't stop!" I looked up, curiously at Levy's excited cry and my mouth dropped open. The same images I had been visualizing in my head were dancing around me, interspersed with various letters and words.

"Check it out!"

"Fae's using her magic! She did it!"

"That's amazing!"

"Rune Magic, huh?"

"Man, check out all the pictures!"

"Way to go, girl!"

I watched the images dance before my eyes, spellbound as my thoughts raced. Emotions linked to the images, both beautiful and the terrifying. And then sound began to emerge as well.

The giant eagles began to scream as they soared around the guild. Orcs and goblins screeched. The Nazgul gave their hair raising cry. Elves sang in their various tongues.

It all ended very abruptly with me collapsing to the ground, eyes wide and wondering what in the name of sanity and the lack thereof was happening...

-vVv-

"Rune Magic is actually one of the more common branches of magic. But it also happens to be one of the more varied and versatile ones." Makarov said, looking all too pleased with himself as he sat me down. "Now that we have identified what your basic magic is, training and refining it will be much simpler. But!" He barked sharply, narrowing his eyes at me. "Do not use your magic without supervision until we have determined your abilities!" I was too busy wondering and buzzing with excitement at what I could do with this magic...

"Our best option would be to have someone with similar magic to yours teach you how to access it. I understand you make a habit of studying with Levy?" I nodded, my smile widening. Levy would be an awesome teacher!

Makarov's mustache twitched as he smiled back.

"Have you ever met Freed, Fae-chan?" _Huh?_

A few minutes later, I stared at the green haired youth with almost comical surprise. Specifically, at the little jagged idiot hairs that he had sticking out like antenna...

"If there isn't anyone else suited to teach her, I suppose I could lend a hand..." He said this as if I were a dirty little brat. I couldn't help but feel a little insulted. So... _Vindictive obfuscating stupidity is a go._

I reached out across the table and flicked one of the antenna.

It wiggled and I saw Freed's brow twitch as he glared at me. I grinned back, pert, unrepentant and ready to learn all I could about the intricacies of Rune Magic.

-vVv-

I think Freed was predisposed to dislike me due to my being a kid. But once I proved I wasn't an average brat, he started to warm up to me a little.

"Rune Magic is, at it's heart, giving the ethernano commands as to how you desire the world around you to function. Whether or not the rune will do as you wish depends on your clarity and your power. The greater the effect you are trying to put in place, the more power will be needed." I wrinkled my nose as I listened.

"Is there any way of working around needing a lot of power? Not everyone has magic power coming out of their ears like Natsu or Laxus..." My teacher actually gave me an approving smile.

"As it so happens, there is. You can accomplish the same thing with a string of lesser commands properly linked together than with a single powerful command. For example." Freed bent down beside me and wrote with his finger on the back of my hand. "I have put down an enchantment that is meant to hinder you from lifting your hand. Try and lift it."

I did as he bade, struggling for a moment as I felt the enchantment try to bar me, but eventually managing to get my hand up to around shoulder height.

"Difficult but doable, correct?" I nodded, examining the handful of runes on my hand. "Any idea of how to remove the spell?" I considered the runes for a moment.

 _Resistance. Hand. Up and rise._ I reached for the stylus that Freed had recommended as my beginner's tool and after a thought, wrote ' _Freedom'_ on my palm. The magic tingled a little, resonating in my nerve endings as a foreign, but very pleasant sensation. While Freed's runes were a dark, majestic purple, mine appeared in a light amber color.

The conflicting enchantments sparked a little, but then I could lift my hand and move it about much more easily. It wasn't completely free, there were still moments of resistance, but it was a lot better than it had been. My tutor examined my rune, more of a curious squiggly line than the neat, blocky text that he used. But he nodded approvingly.

"A simple command, but with the right intent it did it's job even if the match up wasn't perfect." He carefully wiped the old runes by withdrawing the magic power he had put in his runes. I did the same, it had been the first thing he had taught me how to do. Then he put down new runes, this time splitting up the definition of what he meant to hinder to the individual parts of my hand, fingers and palm. This time when I tried to lift it, I could scarcely force it to rise more than a hair's breadth off the table.

"Can you think of some way to counter this?" Freed asked. I examined the runes thoughtfully.

He had applied the same 'resistance' rune-set in multiple places on my hand, and these were much smaller. And each one was tailored to apply to one part of my hand and no more, two on my knuckles, then the back of my hand, the center of my wrist and my thumb joint.

I wouldn't be able to get away just with one counter this time.

I took up the stylus and after a moment's hesitation, began to write.

Freed had instructed me on this first and foremost.

" _There is no right or wrong way to use Rune Magic. Even if an idea sounds absolutely ludicrous, it still has the chance of working if you have the right intent behind what you are inscribing."_

I had gone through a list of antonyms for resistance and had chosen to apply a rune that meant ' _Liberation'_ to my hand this time. But I kept on drawing, writing a few other runes in a spiral around my root word. ' _Motion', 'fingers'_ and ' _palm'._

I ended up with slightly more movement than before. Instead of feeling like something was forcing me to remain still, this time I felt like I couldn't move faster than a snail. I frowned, displeased. But Freed seemed rather pleased.

"Since my magic is much more practiced than yours, it would take some extremely clever writing or a lot more force behind your words to counter my runes completely. But that was very well done Fae. You might become a Rune Wizard yet."

I had lessons with Freed multiple times a week. I once expressed concern that he wasn't able to work as much since he was teaching me. He just waved me off with a smile that gradually became more and more sincere as time passed.

-vVv-

I had been with the guild for almost a year before I formally met Laxus.

The big young man was buff. No two ways about it. I didn't doubt that he had some rabid fans. Seemed to be the type.

 _ **Attempts to seize control of the guild by forcing everyone to fight each other. Tries to blow up the whole city. Makarov's grandson, used to be very close to him, but the relationship became strained after his father, Ivan, was banished from the guild. Lightning Dragon Slayer, 2nd Generation. Lacrima is implanted in his body which allows him to make use of Dragon Slayer magic.**_ My eyes lingered on the bright yellow scar on his face that had the faint aura of magic around it. _His father was the one responsible for implanting the lacrima. But was he really so...callous as to put it in the guy's face? In his head? If that's the case, then no wonder he's a little screwed up..._

He noticed my looking at him. I halfway expected him to make some snappy, harsh comment. But he just scowled at me, in a way that didn't seem...really that intimidating.

"Who are you supposed to be?" A question. Questions I could handle.

"I'm Fae. Who're you?" Light flashed in his eyes, a literal spark of energy that flicked into life and then was gone.

"Name's Laxus Dreyer, brat. Where's the old man?" He meant Makarov. But did I dare push a few buttons when this was the first meeting...? Better be cooperative until I get a better feel for the guy. I knew, somehow, that he wasn't going to hurt me. But irritating people needlessly wasn't my thing.

"Monthly check-in with the Rune Knights." I replied, holding the book I had been reading in a loose grasp as I looked far, far up at the looming wizard. "Did it hurt?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. Laxus looked down at me before making a dismissive sound and sitting at one of the nearby benches.

"Did what hurt?" I drew my finger down my face, mimicking the shape of his scar in answer. I had to imagine getting a chunk of concentrated, foreign magic implanted in your system wasn't an especially pleasant experience. But was there actual pain involved? Or just unconsciousness?

He snorted.

"Like a-" He caught himself before what I suspected would have been a expletive out. My inner adult raised her brows in surprise. "Yeah, it hurt." _Likes kids? No...more like doesn't want to hurt them._ Enough to censor his own language. That in and of itself was impressive. Most adults didn't have that kind of control, never mind a teenager.

"In hindsight that was a pretty personal question." _Where is my mouth filter? I know I have one somewhere..._ "Thank you for answering." This made the large blond look at me with more consideration.

"Fae...that isn't short for Faerun is it?"

"Yeah...?" _Ok. Who told him about me?_

"You're the kid with Rune Magic that Freed's teaching then." There was a contemplative light in his eyes now as he looked at me. My face brightened reflexively.

"You know Freed? Do you know when he's coming back? I finally finished that stupid puzzle he left me-" I hastily bit off the barrage before it could annoy him. I had the feeling it didn't take much to annoy Laxus.

Since this made him crack a smirk, I was somewhat comforted that I wasn't about to get fried or something.

"I know Freed. He's on his way back from his job right now." He eyed me for a moment, then reached out a tugged a slightly wavy lock of my aqua colored hair. It had only grown out an inch or two since I had been cleared by Porlyusica. When I didn't respond to his inspection, he repeated the tug, only this time he did it harder.

"Ow!" I swatted at his hand, frowning at him. _Jerk. Why did you do that?_

"Is that your actual color? Seems a little unnatural."

"Your scar is literally shaped like a lightning bolt and your hair is defying gravity as we speak. And you think my hair is weird?"

-vVv-

I was bickering with Laxus even after Master returned to the guild hall. It was fantastic! He wasn't going to walk on eggshells around me just because I was a kid! And Erza didn't step in and stop him like she did when Natsu! I was aware that I was a good deal more mature than a child of my apparent youth should be, and it was kinda frustrating to not have anyone argue with you seriously!

This dichotomy between the way I thought and the way people thought I should think was getting old fast, but I say no real way of forcing it to change. In my experience, questionable as it was, forcing your ideas on others rarely ever went over well. There was no real, quick way to get it done other than patience and time.

I'd just have to grin and bear it I suppose.

-vVv-

I was practicing almost constantly with my Runes lately. I was trying to decipher the basic components of my script. I was going pretty much on instinct so while I could read the words, be it in my script or in Freed's, I couldn't distinguish individual letters, vowel clusters or consonants. Intent was all well and good, but being able to deliberately shape what I wanted to happen was what I figured was a key part of using runes. Thus if I wanted to make any real headway in my magic, I had to do that.

Which meant writing. A lot of writing. By hand usually.

I lifted my dominant hand and scowled, noting the tiny callous that was starting to form as a result of my constant work. It was irritating me...

"Why the grumpy face, Fae?" Lisanna's kind voice brought me out of my brown study. I smiled up at the white haired Animal Soul Wizard.

"Just not making as much progress as I would like." She slid onto the bench beside me with a fond ruffle of my hair.

"You've only been practicing for a few months. Any kind of magic takes time, especially Rune Magic."

 _But I might not have that time._ I thought with a frown, glancing back down at the lines of text I had been working on. I needed a fast reference guide that I could flip back and forth between. My brain could only process something so fast and holding my rapidly growing dictionary of established Runes took most of my concentration.

 _ **Dragons. Eclipse Gate. Zeref. Lonely. So lonely...**_

"Keep up that kind of attitude and we'll have to start calling you Natsu!" I frowned at Lisanna.

"As if anyone without a literal fire under their tail could be that hasty." She just laughed, ruffling my hair.

"I'm just saying you should enjoy being a kid a little more! You hardly ever seem to do anything except study magic and practice fighting with Erza and Natsu." It was hard to enjoy being a kid when all I wanted to do was be able to talk to someone without being looked down on and finally reach the shelves without a footstool!

I blew away my frustration with some effort. Lisanna meant well. If there was anything that was consistent about her, it was that she always had people's best interests at heart.

But...I did have a reason for going into this with this much dedication. This perfect certainty I had as to how my magic worked. I knew that I had to know as much about this as possible if I was to have a chance at deciphering my past life, and safeguarding the future of the people I cared about.

"I know Lisanna. But...I can't shake the feeling that the more I know about my magic, the better my chances are of finding out where I came from." The white haired girl seemed taken aback and I hurried on. "It-it's not like I want to leave or anything. I love it here! But..." I shook my head, leaning forward on the table over the pages and pages of painstakingly written runes. "But I at least want to know... If I have a family, and if they care, I want them to know I'm safe..."

"Oh Fae, it's ok." Lisanna slipped an arm around my shoulders in a side-hug. "There's nothing wrong with wanting that. I should have been more thoughtful about your situation. I'm sorry." I snorted, leaning into her hold.

"You can't read minds, there's no way you could have known. It's fine."

-vVv-

Gildarts was a big friendly fellow, larger than life and with a presence in his magic that just blanketed the guild hall with good cheer, laughter and protection. It was strange, I concluded as I watched him swat Natsu away. I looked at him and saw a large intimidating wizard that I knew was very dangerous. He could probably find some way to use his magic and crush me just by looking at me. Yet I felt no fear. There was just acceptance and security in his presence.

 _He'd never hurt me. Not seriously._

"The old place hasn't changed that much!" he said grinning and looking around. "Only real difference is Erza and Mira aren't tearing the place up. They're doing good on their jobs!" Master visibly relaxed at the news. I figured that since Gildarts was one of the senior wizards of the guild and one of the strongest, that he would check up on the younger wizards who were out working. He probably wouldn't let on that he was doing so, but just quietly look things over in case they needed a hand. I turned back to my book, wanting to finish as much as I could before Natsu came back and dragged me off for some fist fighting practice.

"Hello, who's this?" Just like that, I was no longer sitting on my bench, but had been hoisted into the air by the back of my shirt and was facing the man himself. Gildarts. I had heard enough about him to know that it was him, but-

 _Holy crap, he does look like Shanks._ I blinked, wondering where the thought had come from. But it had opened up an entirely new avenue in my mind's branching stories that I was willing and eager to explore.

"You gotta be the new kid I heard the old man talk about" He said enthusiastically, scooping me up as easily as he had sent Natsu through the roof of the guild hall. He was squeezing the breath out of me as he cuddled me aggressively. "Aw. And you're even a little cutie too!" I squirmed, wrinkling my nose as I caught a whiff of his clothes...

 _He. Was. Rank!_

"It's nice to meet you and all, but you kinda stink mister..." Gildarts just looked at me...then began to laugh.

"You're an honest one, aren't ya kid? What do they call ya pipsqueak?" He still didn't set me down, instead he carried me to the bar where I proceeded to get interrogated in a friendly, roughshod sort of way. I came away from the interview with the feeling that while Makarov was the dad to everyone in the guild, Gildarts was everybody's favorite uncle that wasn't around that often. So when he was there, everybody was glad to see him. He wanted to know everything that had been going on with everyone and if there was a new face, he wanted a personality to go with it.

After Gildarts made rounds of the people in the guild, and called for a round of drinks for everyone there, he disappeared to talk with the Master for a while. There came a strange silence that made me sit up and look around, wondering if Mystogan was dropping by and putting everyone to sleep... Then I caught the barest hint of extremely potent, powerful magical pressure and shivered in response. _Is this what a sandcastle feels like when a steamroller is bearing down on it?_

"Master must have given Gildarts some news he didn't like." Wakaba remarked, answering my unspoken question. "He only feels like that when he's starting to get mad." The uncomfortable feeling of trying to inhale through a large damp pillow went away after a few more seconds. No one else commented on it.

-vVv-

Upstairs

" _Nice enough kid." Gildarts noted, after reporting the more precise details of what he had seen as he travelled beyond civilization._

" _Who?" Makarov was clearly absorbed in his thoughts, but then he shook his head. "Oh. You mean Fae." The Crash Wizard laughed._

" _Gotta say it's hilarious that the brat just wanders into the guild with a name like that. Almost like she's made to be here!" Makarov tried to smile at Gildarts jovial good cheer, but didn't quite manage. The S-class wizard stilled and looked at the tiny guild master askance._

" _What's up Makarov? You haven't looked like that in years." Not since he had needed to banished his own son. But that wasn't a topic anyone brought up lightly._

" _I'm glad you like Fae, Gildarts, but I am still concerned about how she came to be with us..."_

" _She didn't get placed here by the council?"_

" _Far from it. Natsu found her while he was on a job near the Caelum border. His assigned task was defeating some vulcans that were thought to be in the mountains nearby, since there had been several missing person's reports. He ended up dismantling a dark guild that was later convicted of slave taking..." Gildarts went very still._

" _And the end result...?" Makarov's eyes flashed._

" _Upon the Rune Knights investigation, the guild Natsu destroyed were found to have more than fifty captives of various ages. Interrogation has revealed that the scoundrels attack and ransack villages in the mountains, which are mostly isolated and unable to call for help. They typically don't take more than a handful of adults and leave the rest dead behind them. Most of their prey were children." Gildarts power flared out, filling the air with the heavy, implacable promise of total annihilation._

" _Gildarts." Makarov spoke in reprimand. "The children are nearby. Control yourself." The Crash Wizard exhaled slowly, collecting himself before he tried speaking._

" _So you think Fae was a captive, but that she managed to escape and Natsu picked her up."_

" _It is the only explanation that makes any sense. Natsu says that she was injured when he found her, a short distance away from their camp. And that the dark guild members were searching for an escaped prisoner. Fae had recently unlocked her magic as she made her escape. It made her even more valuable for whatever they intended their captives for. It was this confusion that let Natsu subdue them."_

 _The large man was still, thinking of the little girl who had warmed up to him quickly, and was clearly adored by the other guild members. There wasn't any of that pain in her smile._

" _She doesn't know."_

" _No. Fae cannot recall anything about her life before she awoke under medical attention. She chose her own name, and signed on as our guild's ward." Makarov's clenched fist loosened as there came a burst of raucous laughter from the main floor. Threading through it all was a child's hysterical giggle._

" _Fae was not meant to be here. Chance and a strong dose of luck brought her to us. I cannot say what might have happened had Natsu not been nearby to carry her to safety. But she is here now, and she chose to stay with us instead of going into the foster system." Gildarts gave a half rueful smile._

" _She said anything about joining up when she's older?"_

" _I haven't asked her about it." The guild master stated evenly. "For now, she is a child and that is not something children should have to concern themselves over. We will give her the childhood that those scum tried to take from her, raise her as best we can and let her decide her own fate."_

-vVv-

Gildarts only stayed for a few days, but every day, I could count on being greeted by the big man with a massive bear hug. And when he did so, Natsu never tried to attack him because I was in the way.

"No fair Gildarts! Stop using Fae as a shield!" As usual, Gildarts sent Natsu through a wall with an absent backfist even as he chatted. I just sighed, brushed dust from the rubble off my papers, and kept writing, ceaselessly practicing the individual letters of my Rune Script.

"Watcha doin'?" Gildarts asked in a singsong tone, leaning over my shoulder and watching.

The regretfully familiar sensation of deja vu struck me.

"Plotting world domination." I answered flatly, looking up at him, trying to convey that I was busy and didn't want to entertain him right now. His eyes sparkled.

"Oh? And how would you go about conquering the world, Fae-chan?"

I looked up again and said, with a perfectly straight face, "With my army of flying monkeys, obviously."

This resulted in a very interesting conversation that multiple people joined.

My original joke of conquering the world with an army of flying monkeys was expanded into running a massive magical circus filled with semi sentient animals as cover for getting in and out of countries. There were many suggestions as to how to win support from locals with this circus, and set up coups to dispose of the current monarchs because... lemon cream pie?

A plan that involved world domination that hinged on the presence of a lemon cream pie?

The talk broke down when Mirajane and Erza got into a disagreement ( _I am getting good at understatement._ ) over whether lemon cream pie or strawberry shortcake was better.

 _You know, this is probably why the Magic Council is so wary of this guild...not the property damage, or the closely packed mass of powerful wizards...it's the collective mind._


	3. New Faces

Lisanna and Elfman were the friendly Strauss siblings. Mirajane was an unholy terror, pun fully intended. She had made S-Class in the year that I had been with the guild, still behind Erza's record age of 14 but impressive nonetheless. She never really addressed me that much. She just called me quiet and boring and I was inclined to let her believe that. I doubted that she'd hurt me, even if I annoyed her. But Mirajane was the kind to stick to an idea that she had gotten into her head until it was forcibly beaten out of her. I was definitely not capable of that and probably never would be.

I tried very hard to be neutral towards the white haired siblings. Lisanna I knew the best because she had a crush on Natsu and Natsu had decided that he was my big brother. Not that he actually put this into words, but his actions were pretty easy to interpret.

But then one day came when the three Take-over siblings intended to go on a job. We had said goodbye, and I had gone and sat with a grumpy Natsu for a bit until Happy cheered him up. After that, I headed outside. It was way too nice a day to waste inside! I found a nice sunny spot and was working on a translation assignment Freed had given me when I suddenly froze, words pouring through my mind.

 _ **Lisanna isn't coming back from this job.**_

I blinked and shook myself. The very idea was ridiculous! Mira was the newest S-class mage and she'd never let anyone hurt her younger siblings! But the feeling of foreboding persisted. The words formed an actual voice that repeated the words in my head.

 _ **Lisanna has died. Lisanna is gone.**_ It wasn't malicious or frightening. It was just a bland statement of fact accompanied by the strange blue glow. I tried to beat back the notion but it always slipped back in in spite of everything I tried to do to keep it out.

And it just kept on growing, the vague whispers rapidly evolving into a full blown tale of what had and would transpire.

I saw a beast type monster that was too big and powerful for Elfman to fully assimilate. He went on a rampage, the beast not feeling any pain or growing tired. The battling wills within the same body elevated its already incredible strength to new dangerous levels. Mira exhausted herself trying to help her brother and stop the monster after already having fought it for hours. She was beaten, and had to retreat. Lisanna had no prayer of stopping it with force, so she tried to talk Elfman down. Find the man inside the monster.

The beast swatted her aside without hesitation.

Her eyes were glazed and distant.

" _Mira...where are you...? I can't see you."_

" _I'm right here! Lisanna!...Lisanna!? LISANNA!"_ I was shaking as the story finished forming in my mind. I stumbled to my feet and raced inside the guild hall, feeling like I was about to be sick. I needed to tell someone. To talk to someone. Get this nightmare out of my head...

Master looked at me within furrowed brows when he saw my pale face and tears.

"What's wrong, Fae?"

"Did someone make you cry?" Happy asked, hovering nearby and poking my cheek. "Natsu's eating didn't scare you again, did it?" I swallowed.

"I...I had a...dream or something...I think it came from my magic..." I quaked. "I don't want it to be real..." But I was terrified, horrified, because I had this bleak resignation that it was real. Lisanna was gone. Makarov's face was very serious as he leaned forward.

"What did you see?"

-vVv-

I was a shaking mess for awhile, trying to baffle my way through what I had just seen. Because once Mira and Elfman came back without Lisanna, I knew that it was real. I had known that Lisanna was gone from the very instant she had left the world.

It hit everyone hard. Mira and Elfman didn't speak for a while, everyone seemed subdued and sad. I was left to my own thoughts as everyone grieved and I used this chance to tackle what I had discovered about my magic.

How had I known that Lisanna had died? What was going through my head?

There had been a distinct voice then. Bland and analytical. Informing me of a change in my life, but what had prompted that voice into speaking...?

I fell into meditation and tried to write out everything that had been going through my head at that time. I didn't really know what was going on in my head until I read what I wrote so I foresaw the use of many, many notebooks in my future.

I finally tracked down the trigger then.

There had been that feeling, of something shifting and pulling away from me.

 _Life is a story. My magic could tell that Lisanna was no longer part of it, thus the feeling. When the feeling didn't get it across to me, didn't get me to accept it, it showed me reality._

The future was constantly shifting and changing. But the past was concrete and immovable.

-vVv-

"-thousands of different possible futures. It's why people with Foresight tend to be so...weird." I said lamely, talking out my theory with Makarov. "But once something happens, there isn't anything that can be done to change it. Dozens of possible outcomes are narrowed down to one. The past is a story that can be read under the right circumstances. There is only one truth and one fact, though it might look different from different perspectives. I felt Lisanna leave the story of my life..." I looked down at the papers that still covered my work space. The story blurbs I wrote out even now sometimes caused some image to appear, made a sound or invoked a feeling.

"I don't think Rune Magic is the right way to identify what I have, master. I think I have something more like Story Magic, but runes are just the only way it can express itself." He had listened to me, rubbing his beard thoughtfully.

"I suppose it is possible, Fae. Retrocognition in any form is a highly prized branch of magic, but also a very uncommon one to possess in and of itself. If you have one form, there will likely be some inclination towards other areas of unnatural senses as well, though it will never be as strong as this...Story Magic."

-vVv-

It was weird.

I stared at Mirajane who was wearing her hair down and unlike her usual ponytail. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked like she had pulled on whatever was closest at hand for clothing. She was distraught over Lisanna, we all were in our own way, but now she had a different problem that was bothering her.

"I can't use my magic!" She growled, obviously almost ready to scream and bite someone's throat out. "It's not coming through at all!"

"It isn't unheard of for trauma to alter a wizard's capabilities, Mirajane." Master said calmly, eyes glinting with sympathy. "Only time will tell if you will regain access to your powers."

"But what am I supposed to do!?" She yelled in frustration, drawing the eye of almost everyone in the guild hall. "I can't be a wizard if I don't have magic! I can't do jobs, I can't even sense ethernano properly! I'm useless!"

 _Useless._ The word hit me with tremendous impact.

 _ **Useless. I couldn't defeat the monster. Useless. I let my brother try and use Takeover on something I knew he couldn't handle. Useless. I just sat there and let my sister die. Useless. I can't stay here anymore if I can't work. I don't belong in a wizards guild if I can't call myself one.**_

I couldn't do much about her grief. That was something she had to handle on her own. But about the magic...

I examined the S-class girl. Freed had visual magic, powers that revolved powerfully around his eyes, that let him place runes in midair or reflect their effects on himself. He just thought it and he could place them anywhere in his line of sight with his bare hands, or his sword. But another thing that his Dark Ecriture could do was detect if someone had magic and approximately how much. I didn't have the same inclination towards seeing magic but if I could...

A burst of noise from Mirajane made me shake my head irritably as the distraction tried to force its way into my mind. I began to hum as I chased after the thought I had just had. The potential...

With the sound of my own voice drowning out everything else, the tug of magic came back in full force and my eyes brightened with an idea.

I grabbed a piece of paper and my stylus and began to write, choosing the first words that came to mind. My penmanship and ability to write in my runes had improved greatly to the point of adding articles and other grammar.

 _Let everything magical that is seen through this be marked._ I grimaced at the clumsy phrasing, writing a few words to make the paper a little more sturdy. I couldn't stop now. The runes would only accept magic for a limited amount of time and I had to finish...

I wrote this around the borders of a piece of paper, then quickly grabbed a knife and cut a hole through the middle wide enough to see through. I then pushed some of my magic into the script that edged my makeshift window and felt it come to life, the flimsy material stiffening to the strength of cardboard in my hands.

I lifted it and gazed through it, focusing first on Makarov.

Sure enough, there was a definite glow of...something around him. He also had a faint pale sort of shadow surrounding him that looked much bigger than he was. _Titan Magic. Very strong._ I turned the frame then towards Gray and Natsu who were bickering once again, something that happened much more frequently ever since Lisanna had died.

Gray's power was a pale blue white that clung closely to his skin in frosty patterns. Natsu's aura raged and flared like a bonfire. _It works..._ I let out a breath of relief, then turned the frame on Mirajane, now that I was certain it would work.

She was crying while Master and a couple others comforted her.

But around her, there was still the definite glow of magic. The dark evil that she took on herself and controlled to spare others. It seemed to be suppressed, pulled deep inside her. But there was still magic there.

I approached the group, digging up the words that I would need while the music still thrummed in my head.

"Mira. You don't have to leave Fairy Tail. Even you didn't have magic, we'd never want you to do that." The older girl looked up at me, her blue eyes still reddened with tears.

"I don't have magic, Fae..." She whispered, all anger leached out of her, leaving only despair behind. I smiled and shook my head.

"Yeah you do." I offered her the frame in my hands. "You can use this to see magic. Your Takeover has been buried, but you still have something else you can use anyway you want." Mira stared at me before taking the frame with shaking hands and looking through it to gaze around the room...Then she held her own hand before her face and looked at it through the lens I had provided... It only lasted a few more minutes before my magic ran out. I wasn't good enough to add a feedback loop so that the ethernano in the air could continue to power the script after I closed it off. But it had done its job.

Tears trickled down her face again as I hugged her, settling onto the floor beside her. I didn't say anything else. But I saw several pleased smiles on the faces of the onlookers as Mira's arm went around me and she hugged me back.

-vVv-

Exploring this new avenue of power, viewing my power as a complete story instead of individual commands, did help me master some of it more quickly. The only downside the that was-

"Levy! I wasn't done writing that!" I cried, running after the Solid Script Mage as she raced ahead, eyes eagerly devouring the portion of the Hobbit that I could remember which I was jotting down. I had barely finished the first chapter and was only just writing the song! Or paraphrasing it anyway. Back to the original problem: Levy had caught me midway between finishing the dwarves description of a certain fire-

"Gah!" She dropped the manuscript as it burst into flames. "What the heck!?"

"I was writing about fire!" I exclaimed, hastily trying to beat out the flames. "When you came and pulled it away so suddenly I infused it with magic without thinking!"

"Ice Make-Dome!" Gray's cold crystalline blue ice closed around the papers on the floor, smothering the flames before more damage was done. I let out a sigh of relief.

"Thanks Gray."

"No prob, Fae."

"What gives Ice-for-brains! I was gonna eat that!"

"You'd have eaten Fae's story too and I want to read it without needing to cut your stomach open!" I sighed as the pair began to fight, quickly sucking in another half a dozen or so guild members, including Elfman. He had responded to Lisanna's death by forcing himself to open up and change his previously meek attitude into something more forceful and overbearing. Mirajane didn't have her Takeover anymore, and Lisanna was gone, so that left him as the only Takeover wizard within fifty miles of Magnolia. He was...branching out through necessity. Unfortunately, he seemed to think brawling in the guild hall was an excellent training method.

 _To be fair, it probably is..._

I needed Natsu to actually get my papers out without them getting soaked or blowing them up, so...

"Natsu, the story has a dragon in it." He whipped around, ignoring the fight behind him, eyes shining as he bared his teeth in a big, bright grin.

"Really!? I knew you were an awesome kid, Fae-chan!"

"That's nice, could you please-?"

"Yeah sure, hang on."

I chuckled, rubbing the back of my head as I thought of Smaug. He was certainly as awe-inspiring as I thought Igneel would be. But from what Natsu said, he wasn't nearly as nice. And that was an understatement of the century.

 _I'll probably have to reconsider Smaug's motives beyond him being an evil dragon._ I mused as Natsu happily melted Gray's ice before flinging himself back into the thick of the fray. I picked up the slightly damp pages and organized them, noting what had been damaged. _Maybe have Sauron curse him with greed? Nah, that isn't in the story. I can't change it. It isn't right without Smaug being a stereotypical evil Red Dragon. Then again, he is the bad guy and not much detail is gone into for the antagonists...There's plenty of backstory that I could go into. I don't think copyright extends here from...wherever it's from._

-vVv-

I wanted to focus on writing out the whole saga of the Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth, but a certain big brother figure was very much focused on the dragon. He was insistent that if I was gonna write a dragon as the villain, I had to at least know what they were really like.

Eventually, as I wrote down what he was saying, visualizing the immense firedrake, I realized that Natsu was deviating from general information...

"-said maple fire always tasted too sweet for him and pine made it all sticky! He hated it whenever I snuck some of those logs on!"

He was telling me about Igneel, not dragons.

 ** _He's been faced with so much doubt over the course of time that he treasures up the memories in his heart, where no one can ever steal them or laugh at them_ _._** Natsu had told about his foster father before. But only in passing. **_Flashes of pain and anger whenever someone dismisses the existence of dragons._** To have someone willing to listen and believe, if only for his sake, would have been an answer to an unspoken prayer for the teenaged Dragon Slayer.

Natsu just kept right on talking about Igneel, the way he moved and flew, bringing Natsu to love the sky and freedom. Teaching him how to fish, hunt and live in the natural world and among humans, as best as he knew. Kindling a fire in his belly and heart.

I started a clean page, writing down the impressions and feelings I got from Natsu's words about how much he loved and respected his father. Natsu was a part of my story, yes. But was this enough of a part of him that I could see it with Retrocognition...? Was the second degree relationship enough for me to make something of it?

I closed my eyes as my hand moved automatically, thinking, visualizing and imagining...

A massive scaled form was flying against a orange lit sky, his heavy hide a dark maroon and cream on his under parts, clawed hands looking gnarled and old, but capable and kind. He was gazing at some point on the distant horizon, eyes fixed and focused, glinting the same way Natsu's did when he sensed a good fight coming.

 _Too...too small._

The King of Fire Dragons roared, making the walls shake at the immense sound. Suddenly the image was plastered over the ceiling, making it seem as though the roof had vanished and leaving only sky in it's place. Igneel was hovering now, still gazing at something in the distance, but with Natsu's grin on his scarred, scaled face. His wings pumped, causing a powerful gust of wind to blow over us, sending loose papers, empty mugs and dishes crashing to the floor.

The guild exploded with talk, laughter and cheers.

"Nice one, Fae-chan!"

"Fae! What did I say about-!"

"What the hell!"

"A dragon!?"

"That's so cool!"

"Fae!"

"Dad...?" Instantly, the whole hall fell silent. Natsu looked like a little kid, staring at the image of his father. The first time he had seen anything like him in five years. Natsu had never looked so vulnerable before and I instantly felt like a tactless little girl for dredging up something as painful as Natsu's abandonment in front of everybody!

 _ **He loves him. Natsu is his son. No parent ever forgets their child.**_

The mighty beast looked down then, looked at all of us. But his eyes settled on the trembling Fire Dragon Slayer. And it wasn't an image that looked down. A shallow, empty copy that came from my magic. It was Igneel who looked at Natsu. Right at him. I could feel the pressure of his gaze, the unspoken measure of how proud Igneel was of him. How happy he was with the family Natsu had found.

" _Natsu..."_ The voice moved through the air like a low roll of thunder.

Just there after, the image ended and only the wooden ceiling of the guild hall was left in it's place. I slumped forward, exhausted. I would have been pleased with myself normally.

But, normally, Natsu didn't look like he was barely an inch away from crying. I tried to get up from my seat, move over to him, hug him, apologize, do something to try and make up for my trampling all over an old wound with no regard for what it might do to his feelings.

"Natsu-" The Fire Dragon Slayer wouldn't look at me. He just shook his head and walked out without a word, tension in every line of his shoulders. Happy flitted behind him.

"Natsu? Natsu, what's wrong?"

"Oi!" Gray sounded indignant as he helped me stand. "She burned out all of her magic power for that-!"

"Quiet, Gray." Erza's hand fell on his shoulder as she looked after Natsu once the door swung shut behind him. "Natsu knows Fae didn't mean any harm by it. I don't think she was even aware of what she was doing."

-vVv-

Natsu was sitting at his favorite spot by the river. The flying blue cat was hovering a distance away, wringing his paws in anxiety.

"He's not saying anything, Fae!" He complained, tail poofing out in agitation. "Lisanna always talked him out of his funk whenever he missed Igneel before! What're we gonna do!?" I scratched the cat's ears.

"I'm gonna fix it." I told him simply.

This place was where he usually went to catch fish for Happy, since the days when Natsu actually had the money to buy enough fish from the market to satisfy the ravenous cat were few and far between. But there was a certain heaviness to his usually warm, ever moving aura, an obvious lull in his spirits. I approached, knowing he must have heard me coming, and smelt me since the wind was blowing from behind me. I sat down next to him and gazed out over the rippling water. The river was moving slowly right now. Natsu'd probably get a good haul if he cast a line towards the farthest river bend...

 _Focus._ I reprimanded myself, bringing my mind back to the issue at hand.

Natsu was hurting.

I had caused that. Even if I hadn't meant to do so.

This was my mess and thus my job to fix it.

So what did I say to a boy who was missing the only father he had ever known? Who feared that he would never find him? Who feared that he had been abandoned?

"I'm sorry." I told said, staring at my feet on the riverbank. "You were telling me all about him, and he sounded so amazing...I just wanted to see what your dad looked like. I'm sorry, Natsu..."

There was no sound but the river gurgling in it's banks for awhile.

"Why're you apologizing?" Natsu asked in a low tone.

"You're upset, aren't you?" I asked, leaning forward to try and get a look at his face. He lifted his head and looked at me, flashing a smile that showed a bit of sharpened canine.

"Nah...It just caught me off guard. You really got something special if you can make him come to life like that with just a couple stories." He ruffled my short, messy hair before pulling me in for a hug. "Don't worry about it, Fae. It was good to see him again. I'm not mad, or angry or anything."

The relief coupled with a younger body and the quiet bonding between us brought tears to my eyes. I don't know how what I would have done if Natsu had been angry with me...Natsu didn't mention these as we just watched the river flow for a while.

Then he proceeded to show me how to catch fish barehanded, which eventually turned into a splash fight after we amassed enough for a meal.

It was approaching dinner time when we returned to the guild hall triumphant in our hunt, Natsu bearing me on his shoulders with me holding a string of fish with a drooling Happy clinging to my head.

"Alright, Sara! We got some fish for ya! So let's get some food going cause we're hungry!"

This brought on a murmur of comments from various onlookers.

"That's Natsu for ya."

"Kinda surprised he didn't just torch em."

"Food fixes everything brother!"

"Amen to that!"

But in general, the sentiment I felt was relief at hearing the loud, brash youth sound more like himself.

-vVv-

Gray brought in a new prospective guild member when he came back from his job. I couldn't stop staring at the guy. The first thing he did was go up and flirt with Mirajane! _Well at least he's got the semi-suicidal tendencies down pat. That's gotta be the number one thing we look for._ I was somewhat sarcastic as I thought this, but I was not without evidence. Gray and Natsu constantly picking fights with one another, anyone who harmed Erza's strawberry cake, etc.

It was still new that Mira wasn't acting like a punk-goth with a nasty attitude. To have someone flirt with her, and have her not respond with violence was throwing me for a loop! I wasn't the only one. To those who had seen her in action, Mira would no doubt always remain the She-devil with the reputation to match. She was already developing this terrifyingly sweet smile that made the oldest and roughest of the guild snap to. Erza, on the other hand, tended to corral the younger generation through a combination of fear and absolute trust.

Gray introduced his companion as Loke. A young man around his own age with gingery hair and brown hazel eyes, and who he very clearly got along with. But what was disturbing me, even as Mira placed the guild mark on him, was what I was hearing from my Retrocognition...

 _ **Despair. Complete and utter. The resignation of a condemned man walking towards the gallows.**_

It was something I had been getting more and more the longer I stayed in the guild hall. I confided to Makarov that it felt like a tremendous invasion of privacy to be able to discern people's pasts like this and that it might earn me some hatred. It had already almost ruined my relationship with Natsu.

" _It's part of your magic, Fae-chan. And since it emerged so early, it will likely play a very large part of how you develop as a wizard. I will not deny that there are some who would shun you for this ability, but among our fellow guildmates, that is something I can promise you need not fear."_

I did my utmost to ignore Loke as Gray took him around the guildhall, introducing him to a few prospective partners for taking jobs, or just showing him around and explaining the bare basics of guild life. I noticed that there wasn't a single woman that Loke didn't flirt with. _I can tell that this is gonna get old fast._ And at the same time, I was dreading what would happen when Loke met Erza... but at least it would be funny!

A small hand tugged on my pant leg under the table and I looked down to see a pair of coal black eyes blinking up at me.

"Fae-nee!" Romeo giggled, having abandoned the toys that had previously kept him entertained. "Up!" I smiled down at him.

"Ok, Romeo." The toddler was usually left at the guildhall whenever Macau was working. Ever since the man's divorce, he had been coming around more and more often. And since I was usually... overlooked in the day to day hubbub, minding Romeo and keeping him from getting hurt usually fell to me and, lately, Mirajane.

I reached down hauled him up to sit beside me. He wasn't satisfied with this and climbed into my lap and slapped a pudgy hand onto my paper.

"Story?" I glanced around furtively. I had started telling Romeo a story, Beauty and the Beast actually, complete with illustrations and images. The concept wasn't new. In fact, the edition here went into a lot more detail about the enchantress and gave the curse several different layers that each had to be broken within a certain time limit. But the fun cartoonish images that I visualized for the simple story I told had delighted Romeo when I first started it. If I was speaking, I didn't need to use paper to get the images I wanted. This was using my magic in a way that...hadn't technically been approved of so I tended to try and keep my audience small.

"Alright." I exhaled slowly, reaching into the warm blue glow in my mind that I identified as my magic. We were already placed in a corner of the guild hall so I directed the images to play themselves across a wall. "I believe we left off after Maurice was sent away from the castle by the Beast..."

The pictures were achingly familiar even as I made the story play out, narrating some portions and inventing play by play dialogue for others. Romeo took it all in with wide eyes and rapt silence.

I paused to take a breather after I finished playing through the sweet bonding time between Bell and the Beast. And to let my magic power recover somewhat from the songs and subtle background music I was making.

Someone applauded behind me. I jumped and turned abruptly, almost causing Romeo to tumble out of my lap.

"That's awesome, Fae!" Gray complimented, he was already missing his shirt, though thankfully his pants were still on. "I don't get why you're so shy about your stories, they're amazing."

"I know, right?" Levy gushed from to the side where she had also been listening and watching. "Our little Fae is a natural storyteller!" She said with a wink at me. I wanted to sink into the ground when I noticed just how many people had been observing me entertain Romeo.

"It's a good talent to develop." Mirajane said, offering me a cup to juice to wet my throat. "Illusions and Transformation magic are pretty underrated branches but they can be really effective. Especially if you're into entertainment."

"How long were you guys watching?" I asked, trying not to fidget under the scrutiny.

"Around the time that we saw how much of a bastard Gaston really is." Cana remarked, downing another bottle of wine. _**Her magic is extremely dense and powerful to the point where it could harm her physically**._ That's right, Cana drank like a dehydrated horse for medical reasons. My Retrocognition had revealed this some time ago, although it kept popping up. By constantly having a foreign but not overly dangerous element in her system, she was forcing her magic to dedicate a large portion of itself towards keeping her healthy and hydrated. In addition to keeping all of her organs in peak working condition, Cana was also enhancing her general durability, strength and stamina at the same time. It was just the nature of her magic. She had a crap ton of the stuff! Most other wizards could settle with regular routine magic use, and in Fairy Tail's case, a good brawl. But not Cana. _And not her father, Gildarts._ And boy hadn't that been a spit take moment when I read that off of her. And pretty confusing, too, since Gildarts, as far as I knew, was completely oblivious to the fact that he had a daughter...

"Fae-nee!" Romeo tugged at me. "More!"

"Your Fae-nee needs a break, I've been keeping it up for almost an hour!" Ok, so I may have made the Beast's castle more akin to Hogwarts in some of the things that were animated and that Belle had to interact with as she explored her spacious prison.

"Give it a little time." Mira comforted the four year old. "Fae-chan just needs to get her strength back before she can keep telling you your story. How about a snack?" The kid went off clutching Mira's hand as they headed for the bar.

"Anyway, Loke, this is Fae, I think I told you about her." Gray gestured the wizard over to where I sat even as he grabbed me in side hug and ruffled my messy aquamarine hair.

"Gray, have you been telling stories about me?" I asked, pouting up at me. I was rewarded by a flash of indignation. Apparently I was a cute kid. So I was going to have to milk this for as long as I had it cause puberty would play merry hell with me.

"Only good things." Loke said, grinning down at me, offering a hand. "Nice to meet you Faerun-chan." I took his hand and shook it, smiling back.

"Call me Fae, Loke. Everyone does." He leaned in slightly, peering at me through his tinted glasses. "Something wrong?" He settled back, his smile still there and curious now.

"Just something I've noticed. Fae-chan, has anyone ever told you your eyes are the same color as etherion?" I blinked said ice blue orbs up at the newcomer.

"Say what?" _How would he know what etherion looks like?_ My answer came almost instantly, from the cool voice that had informed me of Lisanna's death.

 _ **Because he's been around long enough to see just about everything. The Zodiac was first and foremost an idea, and an idea can basically live forever.**_

 _But what does the Zodiac have to do with Loke?_ I asked the voice in frustration.

"Exactly the same." Loke affirmed, drawing my attention back outside of my mind. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and smiling down at me in a way that actually felt real instead of what I had gotten off of him at first. "They're gorgeous. You guys are gonna be beating off the boys with a stick when she grows up." This last was addressed at Gray, who Loke had apparently pegged as my big brother figure. Not inaccurately. The only flaw in the idea was that I had more than one. I shivered as the temperature plummeted around the ice Wizard.

"Like hell!" Gray snapped, pulling me closer to him, which only made me shiver even more. "I'll freeze the bastards into a glacier before they can try for Fae!"

"Then Natsu'll send em sky high" Happy chimed in!

"Followed by Freed trapping them in a rune barrier and slowly siphoning out the air." Levy said cheerfully.

"And that's all before Erza has her say!"

"That's not funny!" I cried, squirming. All of these somewhat morbid protective measures were things that I knew very much that my friends could and would do if I was harmed. And that gave me a nice big warm fuzzy even as I shuddered in horror. "Isn't that a little overboard?!"

They all looked at me blankly and I sighed.

"Right. Forgot who I was speaking to. Carry on." _Overboard is Fairy Tail's default setting._ I squirmed and managed to grab Gray's hand.

"Gray, no taking your pants off please. I want to keep my innocence as long as I can."

-vVv-

Loke looked at the little girl under Gray's arm with a genuine smile.

He always had a soft spot for kids. All Celestial Spirits did. So hearing about Fae from Gray had been a pleasant surprise since he hadn't figured that children were inducted into guilds...

" _Fae's not a member. Not officially. She's one of us where it counts though."_ What struck him about the girl was that glance into her eyes had revealed that she was not an ordinary child. There was an age behind her admittedly striking eyes that he felt kinship with. Someone who had seen more than their appearance suggested.

The former Celestial Spirit grinned at her with a spark of genuine mirth that he hadn't felt in a long time in the mortal world.

"If yon Princess wants to keep her innocence, I shall be glad to lend my assistance!" he said dramatically, falling to one knee and clasping her hand and grinning at the look of surprise on her face. "Oh Fairy Princess, bless your humble knight's quest to preserve your purity!"

A little over the top?

Yes.

Worth it?

Absolutely. The girl burst out laughing, bright eyes and face lighting up with joy and mirth. And that made his guilt heavy heart feel a little lighter.

 _Gray was right..._

" _There's something about Fae...She doesn't know where she came from, but she knows where she wants to go. You can't help but feel inspired by the little squirt."_

-vVv-

Loke was soon integrated into the guild. Gray took great pleasure in setting off the Welcoming Brawl. A brutal free-for-all that ended with a huge party. Fairy Tail's way of celebrating and welcoming the newcomer as well as gauging their skills to know what to ask them for on team jobs. What could you say? It was a foolproof way of breaking the ice. The list of awkward topics was a short one after trying to punch someone's teeth out.

I considered this even as everyone patched each other up and slapped Loke on the back, who had acquitted himself well in the showdown.

How did I know about the Welcoming Brawl? I could distinctly remember that no one had ever spelled it out to me that's what this was for. To the average onlooker, it just looked like a messy barroom brawl. Although an unusual number of people were laughing. And if you looked closely, there were two buds who might be slugging it out one second, and are toasting one another the next even as their superficial wounds fade, bolstered by their magic.

But the Welcoming Brawl thing was starting to interest me...

No one had told me about, it but everyone knew exactly what it was...how far could I go with this?

-vVv-

"So Fae-chan, what's on your schedule today!" Makarov asked, taking a break from the daily property damage reports.

"I wanna learn all the guild rules." I said cheerfully, which made the guild master look at me somewhat suspiciously.

"Are you sure, Fae? That's some pretty boring stuff, if I do say so myself-" I laughed.

"Not the stupid rules that the Rune Knights enforce! The fun ones!" I pointed at the bar where Erza was being given a wide berth as she enjoyed a slice of strawberry cake. "Like 'Don't damage Erza's cake'."

The tiny old man looked at me somewhat surprised.

"What makes you say that is a rule? The idiots wreck it all the time."

"And she beats the tar out of them, they're fine within a few hours and the whole thing repeats." I agreed with his sentiment cheerfully. "Those kinds of rules, master. That and I want to know how they came to be rules."

"Of course it involves storytelling, why should that be surprising?" The old man shook his head before smiling. "Have at it Fae-chan. I'm sure you'll get lots of interesting tales."

-vVv-

 _Do not under any circumstances try and make Freed get a haircut._

"He did that? Really?!" One of the older guild members, a mostly retired fellow named Salchow, nodded sagely at me.

"That he did, Fae-chan! And to this day, no one dares chew gum in his presence."

-vVv-

 _Don't call government officials out on being lying, untrustworthy bastards. At least not in public!_

"Somehow it doesn't surprise me that Natsu did that..."

-vVv-

 _God cannot alter the laws at a whim, and you are not his prophet._

"Gray has his own section in Magnolia's public indecency regulations? Again, that really doesn't surprise me."

-vVv-

I learned a whoooooole lot about my guildmates in very short order. Everyone I talked to had some kind of story. And each story brought an additional little flash of insight to their past. For example, I got almost all of Laxus' childhood out of Makarov! Hard to believe that the utterly massive wizard had once been even shorter than the guild master once. And he was a really cute kid!

 _Wonder when he and Freed are gonna come back...?_ I'd once again finished the work Freed had left for me, and then some. If he wasn't gonna be around to wrangle my imagination then it would be his fault whenever I ended up doing... stuff.

"Fae, what are you plotting?" I quickly schooled my features as I looked up at Mira's question. The girl had taken almost a complete turn in personality over the course of the last year since Lisanna's...death. She had abandoned the harsh, brash persona and was now much softer and nicer all around. She was picking up work as the guild's secretary and barmaid.

"A surprise for Freed." I replied glibly.

"A surprise that involves fireworks?" She asked sweetly, pointing over my head. The sparks of colored fire were still lingering in the air for my consideration. _Whoops. Where did they come from?_

"No...but they would fit really well and-!"

"Fae...no."

-vVv-

 **A/N: This is about two years before the start of the show, for anyone who's interested. Check the timeline on the wiki for more details.**


	4. Growing Up

Romeo continually came back to me for a story almost every time he saw me. I was just lucky that my font of creativity was seemingly endless and that some stories were longer than others.

"Say, Princess." Loke asked one day, in a rare moment when he didn't have women fluttering around him. "You've told Romeo at least half a dozen stories, but how many do you have in your head altogether?" Loke was another blessed soul that didn't treat me like a child. Not intellectually anyway.

I thought for a bit...

I had worked my way through Beauty and the Beast, the Jungle Book, Cinderella, the Swan Princess, adapted versions of all three Toy Story's, and was currently starting the Wizard of Oz. Each story had become more and more popular.

But how many stories did I know altogether...?

"I'm going to take your silence as 'a lot'."

"That's probably for the best." I agreed, forcibly yanking my magic away from investigating Loke's past. I had caught a glimpse of it only twice in any great detail, and that was enough for me to know that it was Loke's story to tell and not mine to pry into.

 _ **Loke holding a green haired woman by the wrist with an icy look in his eyes. His hair was a little longer and shaggier, he wasn't wearing his sunglasses and was dressed in an elegant suit coat. A pink haired girl with tiny curled horns on her head vanishing in a soft flare of light. The indomitable feeling of rage and anger on the sheep-girl's behalf. The green woman was angry. She slapped Loke and gave him a harsh order.  
Loke didn't listen, instead he just turned and walked away, bitterness surrounding him even as determination set himself against what the rules dictated for the sake of doing what was right.**_

 _ **The green haired woman was named Karen. The sheep-girl was named Aries. Karen didn't call him Loke, but Leo.**_

Two of the names set me off on a quest inside the unending well of information inside my head.

It came up with identifying Leo and Aries as members of the Zodiac, the Golden Celestial Spirits that some wizards could summon. Their stories extended for hundreds if not thousands of years.

 ** _Leo/Loke, quaking and crying in frustration and guilt as death and blame resonated around him. Karen was nowhere to be seen or felt. Her story was over._**

I could formulate that Loke/Leo had once worked very closely with Karen and Aries. He had intervened when Aries was in trouble at Karen's hand. And that somehow left him being blamed for Karen's death. I didn't see whether he was at fault or not.

After a look like that, I tried really hard not to look further into Loke's past. He had only been here for about a month, so I guessed, with some sadness, that once he worked out what my magic let me see, he would start to avoid me in hopes that I wouldn't trip over the skeletons in his closet.

I turned back to my writing, the lines of my personal script coming quickly and easily now. I started humming softly to block out the errant thoughts that might formulate some unwanted illusions around me. It wasn't dangerous, just kinda distracting for me and everyone else involved.

I was toying more and more with how my Story Magic could play out. It meant I could flip back through someone's past almost indefinitely given some focus. Natsu and Happy had volunteered as my guinea pigs for that. I only managed to go back as far as him meeting Igneel before I hit a wall. It wasn't nothing, it wasn't like when I reached the beginning of Happy's life when he hatched. It was just a long dark corridor that I couldn't get through or see anything in before I ran out of magic power.

But stories had certain cues or red flags that indicated of what could happen in the future. Foreshadowing if you would. But when I had voiced this idea, to my surprise, it was Cana that answered me.

" _Leave telling the future alone for a while, Fae." She said, tossing back another mug of booze. "For me with my cards, it's relatively easy but I don't get any real specifics out of it. What you're doing could be a lot more precise, and could cost a lot more magic power. More than you have right now."_

 _Makarov agreed with a huff._

" _Cana is quite right, Fae. Seeing the future is a dicy business, even for those with the proper inclination to do so. If you want to experiment, I have no objections, but you must be extremely careful. And, I want you to develop your magical core some more before you attempt it."_

He had handed me a fractured lacrima about the size of a marble. By channeling direct magic power into it, I could start to mend the cracks until I had a whole, usable piece again. By draining my magic into it, I would expend my power and my young body would see that my current strength wasn't sufficient and would compensate by opening itself up a little more to draw in larger amounts of ethernano. In this fashion, I would be expanding my overall reserves and speeding my my recovery time from magical use. But the interior of the lacrima was clouded with damage and I knew that I would be a long time in getting the whole thing crystal clear once again.

With that stipulation in place, I decided to try something a little more personal.

I could read other people's past without even trying in some cases. Did that mean I could read mine as well? Could I find where I came from?

For all that my head was filled with information, stories and conditioned knowledge, with emotion connected to all of it, trying to remember anything past waking up in Porlyusica's hut was blanketed in white fog and unreachable. At least under my own power.

I was currently writing out theories on how to go about this. Delving into one's own mind was a common enough practice for wizards. Only when you tried to force someone else's mind did the Rune Knight's start to sit up and pay attention.

I could...feel when a theory was sound and when it wasn't. It just resonated as right to me or wrong. A complete, well written story or if there was something false in it.

So wrapped up in my humming, I barely noticed when something began to weave its way into the song in my head. Almost in a trance, I turned over a new sheet and began to write...

"Laxus is coming back?" Natsu's heated roar made my hair ruffle as he peered over my shoulder, effectively shattering my meditative state. I looked down at what I had written.

 _ **Newcomers are being brought to the guild today by Laxus and Freed**_ _._ How the heck had that...?

"What are you talking about flamebrain?" Gray called from where he was eating lunch. "We don't know when they're coming back."

"Fae said so! She wrote it down right here!" The Fire Dragon Slayer yelled, lifting and brandishing the paper for the whole hall to see. I felt myself blushing, and stretching up.

"Natsu, give it back! I don't know what I was thinking, it's probably nothing!"

-vVv-

Less than an hour later, Laxus came in with Freed beside him, and they were followed by two strangers. One boy, one girl. The boy had a thick wrapping of bandages around his eyes and the girl had dark sunglasses that concealed her eyes completely.

"Freed-sensei!" I cheered, pouncing and hugging the green haired male happily. He blushed in embarrassment as the two newcomers looked at him askance while Laxus just smirked.

"Ah, hello Fae."

"I didn't know you liked being called 'sensei' Freed." Laxus's remark made Freed blush all the more even as he patted my shoulder.

"Freed, I finished everything you left me! Is there something new I can do, please?"

"Wait until Laxus and I have spoken to the master." He placated me, "Gather up everything that you've been doing and show me afterwards, alright?"

"OK!"

"So who are you supposed to be?" The girl inquired, her tone icy and snobbish. Freed's hand rested on my shoulder as he turned towards her with an equally cold tone.

"She's my student." I heard the distinct warning of ' _Back off, don't even think about it'_ in his words. Another thing that was getting stronger with the people I knew well. Hearing subtext and what they meant instead of just what they said. Thing was, I usually only heard it when their meaning was already so obvious that the whole point was moot.

"Brat, these are Evergreen and Bickslow." Laxus said with a careless gesture to the pair behind him. ' _They're mine now'._ "They're gonna be joining the guild." I beamed a little cheekily.

"So does that mean you're finally gonna have a team to do damage control for you, Laxus?" He glared down at me and I didn't feel even a whisper of genuine threat from him.

"Don't push your luck, brat." I just giggled before letting go of Freed to bow to Evergreen and Bickslow.

"It's nice to meet you guys! Laxus is strong enough that he doesn't really need help finishing jobs, just someone to keep him from going overboard so he doesn't have to give back all of the reward for the jobs!" This comment made several of the onlookers laugh. It was a common enough event for all S-class wizards to be too strong for their own good. Thus far, only Gildarts was beating Laxus in terms of extra property damage. Laxus picked me up by the shirt and deposited me back at my table as he walked forward.

"That's enough outta you!" I just cracked up as he lead his team forward along with the rest of the guild who was listening. I could see Erza was sitting on Natsu to keep him from picking a fight with Laxus and the newcomers before they were officially inducted.

 _ **The Thunder Legion**_ _._ I blinked hearing how definitive the voice was about naming their little group, but then I smiled because it fit...

 _They're the Thunder Legion._ Laxus had brought Freed to the guild, too, when his Dark Ecriture was kicking up a fuss. Applying runes to himself directly was something his Eye Magic let him do, though the details of why it was possible escaped me. Then again, to the rest of the world, turning oneself in a dark demonic monster would probably be considered far than just a mere 'fuss'.

-vVv-

I wondered vaguely just what growing up in Fairy Tail was doing to my psyche even as I dodged a stray bolt of lightning. It only took out a three foot section of the wall, so it probably wouldn't have hurt all that bad even if it had hit me.

The Welcoming Brawl was in full swing and the newcomers were doing very well for themselves. Most of the younger powerhouses weren't skilled enough to fight with their eyes closed to avoid having their limbs puppeted by Bixlow, or being petrified by Evergreen.

 _They are getting way too into this..._ I decided as I sat under a reinforced table with my paperwork. I had gathered it all up, but then I'd taken another look at Natsu and decided that having a study session with Freed would have to wait until after the brawl.

From what I had observed, both their powers revolved strongly around being able to see their opponents. Evergreen needed eye contact to turn someone to stone. Bickslow needed much the same.

I couldn't blind the others without giving the newbies an even bigger advantage. But I might be able to do something about Evergreen and Bickslow...

I took two long, narrow strips of paper and began to write in tiny lettering.

 _Obey instruction._ _Fly like birds. Render target incapable of seeing._

The runes were sound and the intent was correct. I carefully tied the matrix together to keep the magic energy cycling through the linked runes, so they would last for longer than 30 seconds.

The papers shifted and spun themselves into tiny, impossibly intricate and lifelike birds that crouched in my hands, waiting for instruction. I brought one up to my lips.

"Your target is the newcomer: Evergreen." I whispered. I then tossed it up and it took flight, zipping straight for the female who was in the process of turning three guild members to stone. I mentally guided it through the dangerous territory until it reached its target, unraveling into a long strip of paper that wound itself around her ankle, then slithered up to her eyes. In the chaos of combat, it went unnoticed by her until it was too late.

I got very swift confirmation that it worked when the twenty or so people that she had petrified returned to their normal states and she let out a piercing scream. Erza took her down easily while she was distracted.

"Evergreen is down!" She called, making those fighters that were blundering about with their eyes closed open their eyes.

Satisfied that my idea had worked, I primed the other bird.

"Your target is the newcomer, Bickslow." I murmured, sending it flying.

This bird went for his head, unraveling and blending in perfectly with the mess of bandages that Bickslow had pulled down to use his magic at fullest capacity.

The brawl was soon over and I celebrated quietly under the table, very pleased with myself. It was the first brawl I had participated in. I tried very hard to keep a straight face even as people started to wonder what had caused the pair's magical eyes to fail them.

"Very nicely done, Fae." Came a familiar voice from over my head. I peered up and saw a very proud looking Freed gazing down at me. "You've improved tremendously." I just grinned in answer.

-vVv-

I was reading as I walked to the guild hall dorms when I saw Mystogan.

I felt myself brighten and jumped up to race after the wandering S-class mage even as he made for the shops that he frequented to restock his travelling supplies.

"Mystogan! Mystogan!" He had only been back twice since I first met him. But true to his word, he always did his best to answer any questions he hadn't been able to give me good answers to on his last visit.

He turned up and I saw his eyes crinkle into a smile as I jumped from the top of the wall to land beside him.

"Hello Fae. I was wondering where you were when I stopped at the guild hall."

"I was at the bookstore." I said, showing the book I had been reading.

"And likely tearing your way through everything they have in stock."

"Only about half of it." I objected. "They've got a bunch of biographies that I'm not interested in, as well a bunch of law books, and cheesy adventure stories."

"Oh? Your taste has evolved so completely in the scant three months since I last saw you?"

"Nah, I just read all of em already!" I replied to his teasing with a bright grin. It was true. I had blitzed through the vast majority of the book store within a few weeks. The shop owner had restricted me to only standing and reading for about an hour at a time. The poor man was half convinced that I was wearing Windreader glasses with the rate that I blew through books.

"You certainly seem to be entertaining yourself though." He remarked, reaching out and examining the book I held, a large doorstopper volume that I had to hold with both hands. "'Ancient Civilizations and the Origin of Wizardry?'" He asked with raised brows.

"It's interesting!"

"Fae-chan, most eight year old girls would be working their way through basic chapter books and not breezing through literature most adults wouldn't read willingly."

"Most eight year old girls don't live in Fairy Tail." I replied blandly. Mystogan smiled and ruffled my hair. I couldn't helped the flash of images I got as my Retrocognition kicked in.

 _ **Mystogan looked down at a little girl with dark blue hair who was beaming up at him with joy. No judgement, just curiosity and trust.**_

" _ **Ne Jellal-nii san? How far are we going to go today?"**_

" _ **Not much farther, Wendy."**_

I was getting better about not reading people's past unwittingly. But if they touched me, it was like their life stories were jumping out at me.

"That's true." Mystogan admitted. "So, you're that invested in your book right now?"

"Yep!" I saw a wry sparkle in his eye as he looked down at me and pulled something thin and rectangular out of his bag-

"That's too bad. I thought you'd be interested in-"

"EEH!?" There was no label on it, but I recognized the way it. "A rune syllabary!?"

"Correct. I had thought that given how much you always complain about not having a good way to store your runes and needing to recall them all from memory that this might interest you but-"

I threw myself into a tackle hug that knocked the big bad S-class wizard to the ground.

"Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou!" I cheered squeezing him as hard as I could.

A rune syllabary was an indispensable magical tool for anyone developing a script. It was a rectangular piece of specialized lacrima about as big as an adults two hands. Once you input the individual parts of your script, you could write in Common, and have it automatically translated. And if there were multiple options for a suitable translation, it would pull up a list of options that could be applicable. They were also far too expensive for me to even think about getting one for years yet.

He ruffled my hair again, either smothering a laugh or struggling to draw breath.

"You're welcome, Fae-chan."

-vVv-

I returned to the guild hall to find a brawl in full swing. But to my bewildered surprise, it was Freed who was right in the thick of things and looking like a rage monster. He hadn't used his forbidden spell, a self transformation, but he was close... I was still clutching the rune syllabary to my chest and trotted over to where my stuff was situated. Laxus was sitting nearby, eating and watching the carnage unfold.

"So...what set Freed off?" I asked, spotting that Bickslow appeared to be Freed's main target.

"Bickslow's just learning what buttons he can push, and which ones he shouldn't." Laxus said, taking a deep draught from his mug.

"That doesn't answer my question..."

-vVv-

" _So who's the little brat I keep seeing around? From the way she pounced on you, I'd have thought she was your baby sister or something." Freed's brow twitched at the derogatory term directed at Fae, but he contained himself well. His words only came out through compressed lips instead of gritted teeth._

" _I believe I already told you. Her name is Faerun. She is a ward of the guild and a budding Rune Mage." Laxus demonstrated a remarkable amount of foresight and rose to move to the corner were Fae usually sat. It had been designated as hers since she had taken to sticking quill pens, ink jars and sheafs of paper underneath all the tables with some basic runes so she would never be very far from something to write on when the inspiration struck. She was very attached to her corner._

" _Really? But you really seemed to like it when she called you, 'Freed-sensei'. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind it! She might be annoying, but she's cute!"_

" _He's just mad that she managed to take him down during his first brawl." Cana muttered into her drink. A few nights after the brawl, Fae had been in bed and the Rune Wizard had had one drink too many. Freed had bragged long and proud about how much progress his student was making. Some people had tried to moderate his boasting, only to be informed with slurred pride that Fae had been the one to neutralize Bickslow and Evergreen during their Welcoming Brawl. The Soul Gaze Wizard hadn't taken the news that he had been defeated by an eight year old girl well._

 _Since it had been made explicitly clear that picking on Fae was a good way to put him on the entire guild's shit list, he had settled for needling Freed._

 _The Rune Wizard ground his teeth audibly, clearly on the verge of breaking... and Bickslow's grin widened._

" _Just think about how that'll be once she's a big girl! Damn, think about all the people that'll be after your little genius protege, wanting her to do their jobs, she'll get famous in no time. I betcha she'll have fanboys too, guys who'll do anything for the chance to touch her-"_

" _Silence!" Freed roared, his sword coming out, his eye turning black and purple as he channeled power through it and runes flickering to life even as he went after Bickslow._

 _He didn't say more after that single angry roar, but the thought hung heavy and ponderous in the air for some._

 _Fae was a cute little girl now. Years away from any sort of development that could lead to unwanted attention._

 _But that would one day change..._

 _Fae would have boys notice her and she would start to notice boys..._

-vVv-

"If you can't figure it out, I'm not saying." Laxus told me gruffly, turning back towards the fight with appraising eyes. I looked at him for a while longer, getting the feeling that whatever he wasn't saying would one day come and bite me somewhere very uncomfortable. I shrugged and looked at the fight, cupping my hands to carry over the noise.

"Kick his ass, sensei!" With my encouragement given, I settled down to start inputting everything that I needed into my shiny new toy for it to really help me out.

-vVv-

It had been two years since I came to Fairy Tail. Since no one had a clue when my actual birthday was, just my approximate age, it was celebrated on the anniversary of my naming myself.

There would be a huge party later, I could read that in the intent in the air almost too easily. Gray and Natsu had annoyed Mira somehow and her punishment was that they had to go and entertain me outside of the guild hall while everyone else got the party ready. And they had to get along.

Erza eventually followed them since they didn't make it ten steps out of the hall before they were fighting.

"You have to be more forceful, Fae." She told me sternly. Behind her, Natsu and Grey nursed smoking lumps on their heads.

"Erza, I'm not that strong." I told her blandly. "I can't exactly write myself more strength without potentially shredding my muscles when they channel force that they aren't meant to." I instantly regretted what I had said as a shiver raced down my back. Brown eyes had never looked more lethal as Erza's gaze glittered down at me.

"I wasn't aware that the exercises I had given you had lost their potency, Fae-chan..." Erza didn't have a slasher smile, but she was certainly mimicking one so perfectly that I couldn't tell the difference. Natsu and Gray had taken refuge somewhere behind me. _Cowards!_

I swallowed, trying to think of some way out of this...

"This is gross misjudgement on my part." The recently crowned Queen of the Fairies mused, eyes growing distant and calculating. "With your magic power growing by the day it should stand to reason that your old workout routine would give you less and less benefit. We'll have to fix that. But today is your birthday..."

"So I get a break?" I asked hopefully.

"Far from it!" Erza roared. I ducked behind Gray and Natsu, or tried to. Erza snatched me and brought me close into a tight hug that made my skull bounce painfully against her breastplate. "We shall go to Akane Resort's amusement park where we will spend many hours racing, running and generally exerting ourselves! The guild has already pitched in for some tickets to the amusement park, but this way we will both spend the day enjoyably and exercise your body!" I had never seen Erza like this... I caught a flash of her conversation with the master a few days ago...

" _ **Get Fae out of the city for awhile. Something that she'll enjoy, but without revealing our plans for when she comes back."**_

Erza's heartfelt desire to celebrate my coming to the guild, coupled with the anxious nerves that most people didn't know she had, had resulted in her social awkwardness skyrocketing. It had an inverse relationship with her ability to lie convincingly, meaning she was acting more like she did whenever she tried to act. In other words, stage fright, rambling, etc.

"Erza, that was supposed to be a surprise!" Gray complained. I was caught up in the feeling of giddy childish excitement though.

"We're going to Akane!?" I demanded, eyes shining, hands reflexively clasped in front of me as I looked up at all of them.

"Aye, sir!" Happy enthused, flying out of the hall and landing in my arms. "Happy Birthday Fae!" I cuddled Happy, feeling like dancing on the spot with excitement.

"That was the plan before miss Blabbermouth spoilt the surprise." Gray grumbled, scowling at Erza while Natsu tried to recover from his perpetual motion sickness. Apparently even the thought of roller coasters could make him sick.

"Don't be silly, Gray, we're still going!" Erza said firmly, managing to calm down somewhat, though she was blushing a little with mortification. "I didn't mean to spoil the surprise. I am very sorry, Fae-"

"Stop apologizing and let's go already! We're burning daylight!"

-vVv-

Gray was the one who primarily went with me on the rides, at least the ones I was allowed on with my relatively small stature. Natsu refused to even go near them, and Erza had to stick close to him to keep him from eating the coals out of the restaurant grills and firepits. Happy tended to fly to the top arc of each coaster and gave me a high five as we zoomed by.

"Alright, Birthday girl, let's give the rides a rest for now." Gray said as he carried me on his back away from the coaster section of the park. "You know Natsu's gonna sulk if he doesn't get to spend some time with you today. It means a lot to him that you decided to stick around." I giggled arms around his shoulders as he walked.

"Sure, Gray. But who's gonna keep you from losing your clothes?" I asked as I nudged his hand away from the hem of his shirt.

"It's a beach location in the middle of summer. Nobody's gonna notice it here if anywhere!" And just like that, I knew that Gray would have jinxed himself.

He and Natsu were almost completely grown. And I had noticed a surprising amount of female attention directed at my big brother figures. They were just too...Fairy Tail centric to notice most of it. I didn't want to admit it, but my surrogate guild was pretty clique-y. They could and would interact with other people, but for the most part, we all lived in this little semi isolated world of madness, magic and destruction. But when I had made this observation to Mystogan, he hadn't seemed concerned and simply explained it was a prevalent habit among most wizarding guilds. People who were born with magic just wanted to stay in a place where they knew they belonged.

And while people might notice, admire and even treat some wizards like celebrities, there was still some division and mistrust. There was a reason that the Wizarding Guild Ward program existed. Ordinary people normally didn't have the same capacity for helping a person capable of using magic grow in a healthy or safe environment.

These heavy thoughts were brought to a stop when Gray managed to slip out of his shirt, with me on his back the entire time. _How the hell...?_ Almost a full minute later, I spotted a pair of girls around Gray's age rubberneck after us. Likely gawking at Gray's guild mark.

I remained blissfully certain of that until a few minutes later when they worked up the nerve to approach us while we were getting ice cream and trying to pinpoint where Erza and Natsu had gone.

I didn't really listen as they started to talk to Gray. I had just gotten a reading on them.

" _ **Incoming hottie, ten o'clock..."**_

" _ **Oh my...it really is my birthday."**_ I shook off the musings of horny teenagers with a shudder. Gray would probably be confused about their attention for a few minutes, then get a clue, and almost instantaneously get awkward. For all that he was good friends with Loke, by now, Gray was the calm one of the duo. And there was something fundamentally wrong with that! Gray didn't do calm!

I glanced back at the Ice Wizard to see that one of the girls was happily clinging to his arm and beaming up at him. There were even sunlight and sparkles around them. _I see some weird stuff._ It was beyond me how the others couldn't see these violations of the laws of nature. It was kinda like the sparkly aura that surrounded Erza whenever she ate her strawberry cake undisturbed. Gray was actually rather stiff and looked somewhat off put by her touch.

I scanned the sky for Happy as I munched my ice cream and sat on a bench waiting for Gray. Then I saw something trailing fire from the top of a roller coaster...

I squinted, sighed and got to my feet. _Erza will get Natsu down. But I'd best be ready in case we have to leave quickly._

"Gray?" The Ice wizard softened noticeably when I approached. I was fixed with the surprised and displeased glares from the two girls who caught onto the very different way he addressed me. He was...borderline polite to outsiders. But I think that to these girls, his attitude had been more of a perk than a real deterrent. But finding out that he could be nice, approachable and even friendly? I shrank a little, widening my eyes and trying my utmost to look like a disappointed, bedraggled kitten. Gray turned and walked a few steps towards me, resting a hand on my aqua colored hair.

"What's up, Fae?" I pointed up even as the girls' glared at me for getting voluntary contact. _I'm freakin' nine! Geeze!_ I bit my tongue and ignored them. Looking hostile would only make this whole situation worse.

"At the moment, Natsu. I think we better find Erza and Happy before they break something trying to get him down." Gray groaned, followed my finger to where the Fire Dragon Slayer was plastered against the front car.

"How the hell did he get up there?"

"We'll probably hear all about it later."

Much to everyone's surprise, we managed to get away from Akane in a timely manner without anyone trying to press charges. _A remarkably positive outcome all things considered._

I would swear the guild roof lifted a few inches off the walls from the roar of greeting, warmth and _home_ that slammed into me as I entered.

I didn't stop smiling even once for the entire night.


	5. Guild Spirit

**Updated with minor edits and changes - 2/15/2019**

-vVv-

Time seemed to fly by.

I was starting to get pretty good with my rune magic. Enough that the master cleared me to work with team Shadowgear on some of their jobs, provided that there was no combat involved. It was pretty interesting to see the variety of things that the noncombatants got involved in.

Put simply, they did everything. Repairing broken or damaged public property, message running, research, item recovery, tutoring, lawn care, forest restoration, or my personal favorite: Curse breaking.

Curses, like regular magic could come in various forms. The only real difference was they typically had a negative effect. Just like runes could be used to imbue objects with useful effects, they could be used to place curses.

To break a curse, you had to identify it, work out what it was intended to do and what it was actually doing, then work with the discrepancies to render the runic layout null and void. That, or you could fulfill the built in trigger that would lift the curse. Only the most powerful and dangerous curses didn't have something worked into them that could break them. You either had to experiment and try and guess what would lift it, or cut the curse off from its original power source.

I had gotten to the point with my Retrocognition that I could identify the exact wording of almost any written magical work with some examination and focus to read the story of how it had been created. Naturally, that sort of information made curse breaking much easier. Sometimes, I could even identify the original caster, which also went a long way. I let Team Shadowgear take all the credit and just received a stipend of the pay and lots of good experience with different styles of writing.

-vVv-

My ability to 'read' the stories of the world made me the go to place for gossip. Or it would have had it been made known exactly what I could do. Makarov had decided that this branch of my magic, while it would make me invaluable for criminal investigations and general detective work, wasn't something that should be common knowledge just yet.

" _Once you take a guild mark and have your own reputation, it will be your prerogative on how to use your magic. Until then, Fae-chan, keep it to yourself. The guild members that know you either know better than to let word of your abilities slip, or have grown so accustomed to it that it doesn't occur to them to talk about it."_ I agreed with Makarov's judgement on keeping it quiet. I don't think he had even told the Rune Knights what my magic was, just that I had magic and was practicing and developing my abilities. There was an unspoken rule about when you could ask what kind of magic someone had and when you couldn't. Among the guild, there weren't very many secrets period and magic was no exception.

I felt that even once I took Fairy Tail's emblem and started working on my own, I wasn't going to flaunt this ability. Knowing things I shouldn't could easily get me into trouble.

-vVv-

I was now fluent in reading and writing my personal rune dialect. According to Freed, my style was very descriptive and deliberate. Much to my amusement, my Runes looked like the script from Tolkien's elves. There were some differences. The sentence structure was different and the writing was more meant to flow and meander instead of being read in straight lines. One page I'd written for practice was somehow meant to be read from the top and bottom at the same time. Levy and Freed had both said that it would be a... challenge for anyone trying to get a read on what I was doing.

I was currently studying how to access Archive Magic. I could really use some extra storage, and Archive magic was my most viable option.

Storing weapons and physical objects was not something I could do, at least not with the various methods my guildmates used. But Archive sounded like something I could tap into. And since I possessed Caster Magic, the ability to use magic without using a magical tool as a focus or crutch, as well as enough Holder Magic to make use of magic items, it seemed ideal. If I could have a private space to store runes, in databases that wouldn't get burned, smashed or ripped by my crazy guild, then I could vastly increase my versatility and ability. My overall Magic power would be drained significantly, having to utilize two types of magic at once, but it would save time when I finally started to take jobs.

According to the last visit to Porlescuya, I should be entering my adolescent growth within a few more years. Around then, I would also hit a final surge of power that would get me from a child's magic reserve up to an adults.

"With all the work you've put in, you're already a fair bit closer than most adult wizards who have been practicing for only three years. But that is always the case. The younger a wizard comes into themselves, the more practiced and powerful they tend to be in th _e long run."_

That transition from childhood to an adult life would be the day when I could take a guildmark and start working!

And frankly that day couldn't come soon enough.

I was starting to get fidgety.

I had so many ideas and no real chance to use any of them without landing myself in huge trouble!

I had discovered a verbal aspect to my Story magic that intrigued me greatly...

-vVv-

 _It was a noisy evening and I was feeling moody. I would bet that this was the onset of puberty hormones starting to wake up in my preadolescent body. For understandable reasons, concluding this didn't make things any better._

 _What's more, I had writer's block! Or rather, a fogged up memory._

 _Since there was nothing here to define high fantasy and various sentient magical beings, I had taken it on myself to rewrite the Lord of the Rings. It was a classic that I could in no way do full justice, but I would do my best to try and reach the same level of depth, character and magic that Middle Earth brought to me. Even though magic was commonplace here, I still felt that Middle Earth's stories taught something that Fiore had to learn._

 _Usually the noise of the guild was comforting, the reassuring clamor_ _always_ _reminding me that my friends, my family, were just behind me._

 _But tonight it was just giving me a headache._

 _I glared at the evening's culprit, Elfman who was enthusiastically armwrestling Natsu. Neither of them was exactly quiet normally anyway, and now..._

"Langlock maxima _ **.**_ " _I growled, wishing that they would just shut up for a moment. I shoved my hands over my ears as I tried to think through the details of what had transpired at Helm's Deep. I had images, but the story itself had more going on than that..._

 _Annoyingly, things were just getting louder..._

 _But there weren't any words spoken. Just laughter and..._

 _I lifted my hands away. There was still noise, but no words. I turned around to see that the rowdiest bunch was attempting to work their jaws. Someone managed to pry their lips apart and let out a laugh._

" _Looks like someone fell afoul of a little curse! Their tongue are glued to the roofs to their mouths!" My own mouth fell open in silent wonder and amazement._

' _Langlock' was a curse from Harry Potter that did just that. 'Maxima' was an additive to verbal spells that expanded the range or potency of the paired word. And the curse was usually single target only, so..._

 _I wracked my brain briefly, trying to come up with something that would remove the curse. If this followed the local rules, then there had to be a counter curse. It wasn't nearly sophisticated enough to not have a release word..._

"Finite Incantatem." _I ventured muttering the words under my breath, focusing on unravelling what I had done. There wasn't any apparent reaction. I screw up my forehead as I poured through the increasingly familiar vault of knowledge I had in my head..._

 _Spells in Harry Potter were either direct Latin, or rough bastardizations that the magical folk had found worked better. 'Think...think...'Finite' would end something. Indicating it is finished or complete...Langlock is a curse, not an enchantment. So it would need a different modifier than 'incantatem'...What's the Latin word for curse?' Almost instantly, the word presented itself to me._

 _And it felt right. The same feeling I got upon hearing someone tell the truth shivered through me._

 _I inhaled, mentally checking my magical reserves and was amazed to find they were barely affected. I could likely do small spells like that for hours!_

" _Alright..._ Finite Maledictum." _Roughly translated, it meant 'End Curse'. As I had hoped, all the Fairy Tail members suddenly had freedom to speak again. There was a tremendous uproar as people tried to determine who had used the temporary prank-curse. People were checking under tables for some kind of charm that had carried it into the hall._

 _I sat in contemplation as to what had just happened and didn't say anything._

-vVv-

After some deliberation and experimentation, I concluded that it lead back to my Story Magic. Perhaps an even closer aspect of it than even my storytelling illusions.

What I thought would happen when I said a certain thing, could then become reality because of the backstory, emotion and connection that I had attached to the words. In Harry Potter, I knew Langlock was a curse meant to glue the tongue to the roof of someone's mouth, rendering the target silent. I thought of how it had been used in the story, and how Harry had discovered it. In turn, my magic had taken that brief, almost inconsequential story, and made it come to life, quite literally.

It meant that spells, chants and other words that I attached a specific meaning to had the potential to become weapons of mass destruction. Because of all the things I had crammed into my head... Suddenly all that somewhat meaningless knowledge took on a whole new light.

Words could already change the world. My magic just made that concept a lot more literal.

I had reported my discovery to Makarov and made the old wizard have a magnificent spit take all down his front.

Needless to say, practicing this new aspect of my magic took up much of my time.

With some practice, I discovered that the more specific I made a verbal spell, the less energy it cost. While if I was relying on my intent to carry the effect out, it took more power.

 _Ties back nicely into the whole concept of life being a story._ I mused. _A one word story can exist, but the more description and color you add to it, the better it becomes in the long run._

-vVv-

For every one wizard in the world, there were nine regular civilians. And out of every two hundred wizards, there was always one that was just abso-flipping-lutely unbelievably powerful at an absurdly young age. IE: Gildarts or Erza. Both of whom were almost literal titans in their magical capacity.

A wizard's magical capacity grew as they practiced their powers, and as they got older. What's more, the studies I had forced myself to read indicated that it never quite stopped. People didn't have such a thing as a top limit, just a different learning curve and growth rate. The average between the two gave a rough idea of how strong a wizard could or would be.

Erza had a monumental growth rate, her power would always replenish itself in a blisteringly short amount of time. Same with Natsu's, and he could speed up his recovery even more by eating some form of fire. But their learning was restricted to their specific talents. Erza couldn't expand her range beyond weapons, armor and clothing, as opposed to Bisca who was able to stow food and all sorts of other supplies in her Requip space. And Natsu could no more cast an ice or water spell than Happy could swear off fish.

On the other hand, Levy and I had below average growth rates, but very steep learning curves, meaning we could do more with the comparative little that we had. Letter magic was already very versatile, so being smart and being a Script Mage of any kind gave you a way to keep up with the nonsense that some of the heavy hitters could pull off.

To clarify, being a Wizard identified your primary magic. The way your power preferred to interact with the ethernano in the world around you. Example: Laxus is a Lightning Wizard. Exact details of your power were what you were called a mage in. Example: Evergreen is a Fairy Mage. The exact definition had confused me something fierce until Mystogan clarified it for me.

So, I was a Rune Wizard, because I used runes and written text primarily, but I was a Story Mage. And since stories could be verbal, written or visual, it gave me a lot of room to play with.

My primary function in the guild hall whenever I wasn't working was on rune maintenance or helping Mira tend the bar was entertainment.

I had long since finished all the classic Disney movies that I could remember, but that was barely scratching the surface of the stories buried in my magic.

I was currently portraying the history of Hyrule and how it had begun. The first three sessions had been devoted to setting up Skyloft, to try and get across the sheer majesty of an world with no ground or ocean. Just floating islands and the sky...

It was really popular. Mirajane had started advertising whenever I was going to be storytelling, whether it was continuing a lengthy story or telling a few shorter ones, and turned it into a source of guild revenue. I had considered putting it into book form, but decided against it. A legend like this couldn't be portrayed in mere words. Or if it could, I couldn't do it yet.

It hadn't stopped me from publishing a book under a pen name only last month. Specifically, the first part of The Lord of the Rings, or at least the closest approximation of Tolkien's masterpiece that I could manage.

It had jumped to the top of the best seller list practially overnight. By the end of the first month, it had broken some records.

Another month later, it was still the #1 best seller in Fiore.

My guildmates were very proud, even if most of them weren't exactly academically inclined.

I had already gotten several requests from certain members, cough*Levy*cough, for me to read my book aloud and bring the characters to life with what I had imagined them looking like.

It was life.

A good life too.

 _ **Everything will change. A new chapter begins.**_

 _Aaaand that wasn't ominous at all..._

-vVv-

"You told Natsu that a Fire Wizard calling himself Salamander was seen in Hargeon yesterday?" I asked Krov, feeling my face go blank.

"Yeah, I just said that!" I sat...then started to repeatedly and rhythmically slam my head against the wood of the table. "Wha-What's wrong Fae?"

"Krov...'Salamander' is what the papers are calling Natsu. And he, until recently, hasn't been down south for almost a month..." _Save me from the lacking mental capacity of my guildmates..._ There came a round of laughter from a few people who had been listening in.

"Oh boy, Natsu's gonna be pissed when he gets back!"

"Duck and cover!"

"Better start running now, Krov."

"Can I get a refill?" I pushed myself up from the bar behind which I was sitting.

" _Accio_!" I imbued the word with magic, whisking the customer's empty mug out of his hand with and went to refill it from the tap.

Mirajane was out at a photoshoot, so I was doing the bar tending. If I had tried to work by hand, I would have been overwhelmed, even at slow times, but since I had magic that was versatile enough to help out, I managed well enough.

I eyed a stubborn stain on the bar where someone had decided to spill their drink, I sighed.

" _Scourgify._ " I muttered rubbing a cloth over it. The stain lifted away bit by bit with some magical encouragement. I was standing on a pull out lip behind the bar that let me reach across the wooden space without much strain. My hand flicked out with a short gesture.

" _Aculeus!_ " The Stinging Jinx flashed across the space and into the hand of a patron that was making to take a job off the request board. "Please leave the guild's job requests alone." I called out to him, noting his guild mark. _Orochi's Fin. Lamia Scale's less than upright rival._ The wizard sent me a scowl, but didn't contest my warning or the minor stinging sensation his hand was currently experiencing. I hadn't put a lot of power into it so he didn't even have any swelling for his trouble.

The first few times that I had needed to intervene, there had been some fuss about a kid doing so. I may or may not have broken the floor a little in smacking down one rowdy customer. _It's less damage than what the others would have caused!_ Makarov hadn't been happy about the damage, but had conceded the point after listening to the angry visitor swear that he would 'teach the upstart little brat a lesson'. Not an exact quote, but the original statement contained more than a few swear words. Loke had very calmly kicked the drunk to the curb and judging by the loud thump I heard from outside, had knocked him unconscious to sleep off the alcohol for good measure.

I sent the refilled mug back to it's original owner with a mutter of ' _D_ _epulso!_ '. Then I went to a bartender's customary and somewhat iconic pastime: polishing glasses. I probably could have scrounged up some words to do it all with magic, but it at least gave me something to do.

-vVv-

Natsu came back to the guild about two days later with a blonde girl in tow.

 _ **Lucy Heartfilia. Summoning Wizard. Celestial Spirit Mage.**_ I read that off of her, but forced my magic away from looking any further. She just introduced herself as 'Lucy' though... _Doesn't want to have her last name known._ When they arrived, I saw Krov make a break for the back door. He was just a touch too slow, though. Natsu leapt after him as Happy flew over to me.

"I told Natsu he should have checked the story with you first, but he didn't listen." The flying cat said with a sigh.

"Well it doesn't seem to have ended too badly." I said mildly. "Master got the report this morning. He only wrecked half the of the port this time."

"Half? This time!?" Lucy squawked.

"Natsu has an intense dislike of boats." I reported to her. "One time, someone managed to get a curse on him when he was in Hargeon. Pretty incompetent criminal to not read between the lines. He thought it would bring out Natsu's inner darkness and get him an ally to protect him from the Rune Knights. Instead it just ended up with Natsu's most brutally honest desires to come out, and removed all impulse control."

"I heard about that. Now that I've met him, it doesn't surprise me that it turned out to be him." I propped my chin in my hand as I appraised the newcomer.

Lucy wasn't that tall, but she was busty, enough so that I noticed even though I was a kid. Her bright blonde hair fell about to her shoulders with her bangs gathered to one side, out of her friendly brown eyes. Her key ring with half a dozen silver and gold Celestial Spirit keys was sitting comfortably at her belt along with a coiled whip.

"Natsu's never brought anyone back before... Are you looking to join the guild?" I asked bluntly, noting with a touch of curious interest that there was a split second's worth of a blush on her face.

"I want to, yeah..."

"New members are only let in with another member's endorsement or some other way to determine if they would work in the guild." I explained, watching as Natsu managed to catch Krov. I slid from my bench, taking my food with me and sat under the table.

"Um, what are you doing?" I touched the rune that I had set up underneath the table.

"Taking cover." I said, taking another bite of my food. "I've noticed that whenever we get a new member, everyone finds some excuse to start a fight to see how the newbie reacts." Lucy hastily ducked as a blazing piece of wood that used to be a chair sailed over her head.

"Is this some kinda test!?"

"I guess some people want to think that it is." A piece of rubble came at my lair and vaporized against a magical rune barrier. "Personally, I think they just want an excuse to brawl."

I'd have given Lucy some shelter if she asked for it. Happy had taken refuge with me and was happily eating some fish that he had pulled from his pouch.

"How are the preservation runes holding up?" I asked him as he devoured his snack.

"Mmmmhmhmm, mph!"

"That's good to hear."

"In your bunker again Fae?" Mira asked, bending down to peer at me with a smile that had become staple for her.

"You know how often I've lost a good meal to this kind of thing."

-vVv-

Lucy was starting to think that she was losing her mind.

Fairy Tail had a rambunctious reputation but this was taking it a little further than she had originally thought! Natsu just attacked one of his own guildmates out of the blue! And then everyone had started fighting.

She crouched by the table that the little girl had retreated under, seeing lines and lines of runes marching across the underside of the table.

"Someone made you a bunker?" The bright, pale blue eyes of the girl looked back at her with a smile.

"Yep! I'm not strong enough a wizard to take these kinds of fights directly. So I've got my little hidey hole for when things go crazy!"

Lucy swallowed.

"You're a member of Fairy Tail? But you're just a kid!"

"She's technically a ward, not a full member." Commented a lovely, white haired young woman. Lucy flushed. _Holy Crap it's Mirajane in the flesh!_

"A ward?"

"I'm an orphan, so the guild was put in charge of financing my childhood and education. But the thing was, I had active magic that made me ill suited to the normal foster care system. So I hang out here all the time because the guildmaster is my legal guardian." The aqua haired girl explained. "You'd better pay attention. People can get sucked into these fights pretty easily if they don't stay on their guard."

"No one does anything to stop them?" She had always thought that barroom brawls were the worst kind of fights and had to be ended quickly for the safety of all those involved. But neither the younger nor the older of the girls seemed that concerned.

"It's always like this around here." Mirajane said with a light laugh even as a large white haired man came flying at her and knocked her flat. "It's kinda fun, don't you think?" She then went limp in unconsciousness.

"Aaaaah!" Lucy shrieked, darting over to try and heave the senseless man off of her idol. "Don't die Mirajane!"

-vVv-

It was probably wrong to be so amused by the newbie's antics. But I couldn't help but stifle a snicker. For all that Mira hadn't actually fought anyone for over two years, she still had a lot of dormant magic power inside her that would absorb the worst of any physical damage that was inflicted on her.

"Gray, your clothes?"

"I don't have time for that!"

 _If Erza were here, she'd have smacked everyone senseless before it came to this point._ I thought with a sigh. She was particular about portraying a positive image of the guild to newcomers or visitors. You know, a good impression vs an honest impression. Natsu was more in favor of the honest impression.

Gray joined the fight. I sighed, flicking my finger towards where he had been sitting.

" _Accio._ " Gray's clothes flew over to near my table and I started to fold them. If I didn't retrieve Gray's clothes relatively quickly after he discarded them, they tended to disappear. And I knew exactly where to. Happy took advantage of the fact that there were some girls out there willing to buy Gray's cast offs simply because they had once been on his body. It was where he got his primary fish-fund whenever Natsu was too busy to go fishing and catch some for him.

"Give me back my underwear, jerk!"

I sighed and closed my eyes and spoke aloud with magical intent.

" _Censor my vision._ " When I dared open my eyes again, a pair of sunglasses had formed over my eyes, placing a blurred bar area over Gray's privates.

"Gray! No flashing the kid!" A voice called in scolding.

"Crap!" Gray looked around frantically before spotting Lucy. "Excuse me miss, could I borrow your underwear?"

"As if!" Lucy shrieked in anger. She surprised many people by clocking Gray across the face with a board without hesitation. He went an impressive distance. _Nice air time...Wait, where did the board come from?..._ As I glanced over everyone, I concluded that she had also earned a hefty amount of respect for that. Natsu had seen it and was grinning, with great satisfaction. I read the general opinion. _It usually takes a rookie at least ten minutes of watching the Welcoming Brawl before they'll start fighting._ It hadn't been going even for five minutes before Lucy sent Gray into a wall with a swing that would have been at home in a baseball diamond. _She'll fit right in._ And she'd actually sent him flying with good velocity and arc. For all that she looked like a Barbie, Lucy seemed to have some decent upper body strength.

 _That or the Righteous Indignation of the situation let her exert more physical power than she should actually have been able to. One or the other._

Either way, for all that the master would soon be intervening, Lucy had already made a good start with her introduction to Fairy Tail life.

-vVv-

Once Lucy managed to restart her heart after the brief scare she had gotten (How could a man be so massive and scary and then so tiny!?) she finally did it.

 _I did it Mom... I'm a member of Fairy Tail!_ She gazed at the guild mark on the back of her hand, where she could always see it and remind herself that she was a practicing wizard. And no one could take that away from her...

The Celestial Spirit Mage only then realized that she didn't know anybody in the guild except Natsu and he was stuffing his face from the fireplace. _I've seen him do it with Bora's magic and it still doesn't make any sense..._

"Hey, Fae? Can you clean this up?" The little aqua-blue haired girl emerged from under the table where she had been hiding, hands on her hips as she surveyed the room.

"When you went this far overboard? Not a chance! I barely have enough magic power to fix the floor, let alone the furniture and walls too." There came a chorus of groans.

"Ah well. We'll just call in the next rotation of furniture. Pack it up people, let's get it ready for the repairmen!" Lucy was then witness to a bewildering sight as the former brawlers began to pick the furniture out of the rubble they had created and stack it together.

"What's going on?" Mirajane provided Lucy her answer as the girl, Fae, the one wizard had called her, held her hands over the gaps in the walls and began to murmur, causing the broken pieces to fly back together and the holes to mend themselves.

"The guild breaks a lot of stuff all the time, so we have a working relationship with a few local Craftsmen guilds. We've got several different sets of furniture that we rotate out whenever we break something. There's usually enough that's already been fixed or replaced to keep the seating and furniture in the hall up."

"That's..." Pragmatic, practical and _somewhat unbelievable that it is even necessary...!_ "-smart." Lucy finished lamely, wondering what she had gotten herself into...

"Excuse me." Fae addressed her politely, bowing slightly. "You're standing in a crater." Lucy yelped and jumped back. But her surprise developed into great interest as Fae held out her hands and began to speak. Her soft child's voice seemed to be grave, wise and much older. It was the surety with which she spoke that elevated her.

" _Area Reparo._ " She intoned, and when she did, an elegant amber script winked into existence, written across the floor. Shattered boards flew back into their original place, mending themselves without a mar or crack to indicate where they had been ruined.

"You're a Rune Wizard?" Lucy asked in surprise once Fae had completed her spell and moved to go to another broken area. Once again, ice blue eyes met hers as the girl looked up at her with a wise, considering appraisal that made Lucy wonder just how smart this girl was...

"Yep!"

"C'mon Fae-chan, don't go selling yourself short." A curvy brunette drawled, face slightly flushed and half staggering as she slung an arm over the younger girls' shoulder. "Our cute little Fairy Princess here is the only known Story Mage in the world!"

"Cana!" Fae complained, scowling and blushing, face crinkling in what appeared to be disgust as the older woman's alcohol soaked breath wafted into her face. The gesture made her seem a lot more like a child than...something that Lucy couldn't name.

"Story Mage? I've never heard of that kind of magic. What does it do?" Fae glared at Cana, her striking, powerful eyes not having any effect. She placed her palm against the woman's forehead.

" _Esuna."_ Cana just laughed as she released the girl.

"Whatever Fae thinks words should do, they do! Thanks for the detox, Fae!" She then sauntered back to the bar, perfectly sure and steady on her feet. Lucy gaped. The faint flush on her face was gone, her balance had been restored, even the smell of liquor had vanished!

"She's sober!?" Lucy demanded. Fae sighed and frowned.

"Yeah. Esuna is an anti-toxin spell that I made up. My Story Magic means that if I can imagine a spell, the way it works, how it's used, who uses it, the works...then I can use it just the way I imagine it." _But then...she could make up just about anything off of the top of her head!_ This was the kind of person that would be joining Fairy Tail in the future! Suddenly Lucy felt very small and simple in her powers...

Fae looked thoughtful.

"The real downside is I have to have read or thought up some kind of story in which the spell is used. And even then, it's not guaranteed that it will work. I haven't tested it on any venoms or plant poisons, just being drunk cause alcohol counts as a toxin..." _Oh...I get it._ Lucy's mind unwound as she saw the slight tension and concern in Fae's shoulders and a heaviness in her eyes that looked out of place in a child.

 _Fae essentially has to discover a whole new branch of spells for her magic. It's ground breaking at every turn which means it's really hard work. She has to find her limits without hurting anyone or herself._ While it had the potential to be incredible, it was also a lot of strain to put on a girl who didn't look as if she could be more than nine or ten years old. _No wonder Fairy Tail took her on. I can't imagine a regular orphanage would have had the support she needs._

-vVv-

It had been maybe two days since Lucy had joined the guild.

During that time, she had been introduced to everyone who was there at the moment and been given a crash course in guild life.

I tilted my head as I felt an update in Macao's story.

 _ **Cold, dark, snow. Frustration. Anger. The warring of two minds struggling for dominance and control.**_

I trotted over to Makarov.

"Master, I think something happened to Macao." The small man opened his eyes, serious and alert. After almost two years of this happening every now and then, he had come to acknowledge that my Story Magic kept tabs on the people I cared about.

"Does he need help?" I frowned, considering the impression I had received...

"I think so. Whatever happened to him, he's starting to lose his grip on himself. Didn't he take a job hunting that nest of mountain Vulcans?"

"That he did..." Makarov mused, arms folded. "It may be that one of the beasts got the better of Macao and used Takeover on him."

Makarov quietly asked around for someone who could go and check on Macao. Natsu volunteered instantly. Shortly afterward, Romeo entered the guild hall and made a beeline for Makarov. _He's worried, too..._

I scooped him up as I walked by.

"We've already got someone on the case, Romeo. Don't worry about it. Natsu'll get your dad back." His face went slack with relief and he relaxed into my hold.

"Yeah...Natsu always keeps his promises." I read a strong sense of guilt coming from Romeo. Apparently his parting with his father a few days back hadn't been smooth. He had been feeling somewhat pressured by other children in the city who were mocking him because Macau was a member of Fairy Tail. Romeo had wanted to find some self actualization and had angrily demanded that his father get up and do some work.

And now he was late in returning from a job that Romeo had told his father to take. _Guilt City._ I ruffled Romeo's hair as Natsu raced out of the building, dragging Lucy along with him.

 _ **NaLu has set sail!**_ This voice wasn't like the other times I had heard it. When Lisanna had died, or when it had told me that Loke was actually Leo, it was a bland grey statement of fact. This was pink and glittering and...giggly.

 _...I get live updates on ships!?_


	6. Storyteller

**Updated with minor edits and changes - 2/15/2019**

-vVv-

Lucy felt she was settling in pretty well. She had a little trouble finding an apartment, but luckily her new guild mates were more than happy to help. She found a place that was close to the hall, cheap, and more than satisfactory! She was just lucky she had enough savings to put down the deposit and make the payment for the first month. _I'm gonna have to starting working soon. 70,000 jewel a month is a steal, but there's the guild dues to be payed, as well as my groceries and wardrobe..._ She could already see her carefully hoarded savings dwindle in her mind's eyes.

"Hey Fae, let's have a story!" The Dance Mage called. _What's his name again...Vijeeter? I think?_ "I'm dying to know what the deal is with that Skyloft place!"

"Yeah! You haven't even told us why all the people are living on those dinky little islands!"

 _Stories...?_ Lucy recalled a new article on Fairy Tail's latest activity in Sorcerer Weekly. A storytelling hour, with illusionary complements and audio. They were the biggest thing in Magnolia and people were coming by all the time to try and get seats.

 _Figures Fae's the one who tells them. It's probably the guild's way of helping her practice her magic without straining her or putting her in danger._

The girl gave a crooked half smile as she paused in her writing. It seemed to be really normal for her to be writing. The table that was her bunker for when the guild got crazy was known to the entire guild as 'Fae's Table'. It was usually covered with books, papers and writing materials.

"I think I haven't gotten the scale across properly." She said teasingly. "We're talking a significant portion of the human race. There's a lot more land than just the few islands that the story takes place on."

"So get on with it!" This yell was backed by about 2 dozen different voices of encouragement.

"No can do." Fae replied, shutting the celebration down cold. "I'll resume tonight when everyone is back from their jobs." Nothing that was said could sway the resolute girl in this matter so people reluctantly let it go.

"Fae's storytelling is that popular?" Lucy wondered aloud.

"It's not just her storytelling." The Solid Script Mage, Levy interjected with a big smile. "Fae makes all of her stories up! Even if you've heard the fairy tales she bases them off of, you're in for a surprise at almost every turn! They're pretty much originals!"

"All original stories!?" Lucy gasped. _And she's willing to just tell them?!_ The thought of letting someone else read her stories made Lucy cringe a little inside.

"You betcha!" Levy said with a wink. "Fae reads like lightning, and once she's read it, it takes a lot for her to forget it. I'm just amazed we haven't all gotten sucked in by her black hole of a brain."

"Wow..." Lucy looked around again, listening as several people enthusiastically recounted their favorite parts of Fae's previously shared narratives. "Hard to imagine a bunch of grown up, experienced wizards acting like toddlers at story time..."

"That's Fairy Tail for ya!" Jet said with a grin. Droy came in right behind him.

"You'll see why everyone's so eager tonight. You've never seen or heard anything like what Fae can do!"

-vVv-

Later that evening, the guild hall was crammed to maximum capacity, with dozens of townspeople and other visitors seeming to have filled the whole place to the roof.

"Come on Lucy!" Happy fluttered nearby with a big, somewhat vacant grin that was his signature as he towed Lucy through the crowd. "We want to be right up front when she starts!"

"Is it always such a big production?" The blonde asked as she picked her way carefully.

"Aye! This is the biggest crowd we've had in a while since Fae says that this story's gonna take a long time and those are the best kinds!"

The stage was Fae's table, which had been moved to the front of the hall. The girl's greenish hair fell in messy tousled strands around her face as her gleaming blue eyes passed over the crowd. She wasn't beaming with the attention, but she wasn't shying away from it either. She sat on the edge of her table, looking out through the crowd. Several people had moved forward to talk to her, behaving rather as if they were addressing a celebrity.

"Oi, Happy, Lucy!" Natsu waved from one table near the front that was loaded with food. "Bout time you guys showed up!"

"Natsu?!" Lucy was stunned. "You're here too?" _I wouldn't have pegged him to be the type for listening to a little girl talk..._

"You betcha!" Natsu said with a grin that showed off his impressive incisors. "I'll never miss out on one of Fae's stories if I can help it!"

"She might not look it right now, but Fae doesn't actually like being the center of attention." Happy explained, settling on the table and grabbing a fish. "She used to get all embarrassed and flustered whenever she noticed someone listening to her telling Romeo a story."

 _So Natsu's here to support Fae and cheer her on in case she gets nervous._ The thought made Lucy smile as the pink haired wizard waved cheerfully at Fae who returned the gesture with a bright smile that seemed to light up the room. _That's actually kinda sweet and thoughtful of him. Who'd have thought Natsu had it in him?_

Many other wizards settled at the table Natsu had commandeered. Gray, Mirajane who was letting the other waitress handle the food and drinks so she could listen to Fae, Elfman, Levy, Jet and Droy. Even Makarov was sitting cross legged on the table, funny hat and all. This one looked like a pair of cat ears. It seemed to have some significance to them since Fae was clearly fighting to restrain laughter when she saw it.

But finally, everyone was seated and the chatter was dying into whispers.

Fae lifted a hand and tapped her lips, her amber magic circle appearing. Lucy was close enough to hear her whisper:

" _Sonorus mediocus."_ Fae cleared her throat, and her voice suddenly resonated throughout the hall, amplified by her magic. "Can you all hear me?" There came a chorus of assent and cheers in answer.

Fae took a deep breath, closing her eyes...

"Then... _let's begin._ " Lucy went still as a quiet filled the air. Not the stillness of anticipation, but the blank promise of an empty canvas. " _As you know, in the beginning, there was nothing until the Three Goddess of Creation descended. Spreading her great arms, Din, the Goddess of Power, created the red earth and all things within it."_ There was darkness, then there came a flash of red. Then bare, naked ground lay in the emptiness. Mountains reached to the dark sky, void of any life. It was majestic and powerful...but empty. Lucy's breath caught as Fae's childish voice changed, becoming ethereal and distant. Not at all sounding like a girl before reaching puberty.

" _After came her sister, Nayru, Goddess of Wisdom. And she gifted the world Din had begun with her wisdom, giving it law and order."_ A blue flash darted across the image. There was a blue sky filled with clouds overhead now. Wind rustled over the bare ground, kicking up small dust devils. But Naryu wasn't finished because in another blitz of soft light, water poured out of nowhere to form oceans and rivers, breaking up the bare earth and stone with the cool lapping of waves and the kiss of sea spray.

" _Last came Farore, Goddess of Courage. And it was she who filled the world of her sister's making with life. They would wield the power of the earth Din had forged for them, and live by the laws Nayru had set."_ A wave of green light moved over the world, bringing in its wake plants and other life. Rolling plains, trees coating the mountain sides like emerald moss. Birds soared through the sky and horses charged across the plains, some of them bearing riders.

" _Their task completed, the goddess saw that their world was whole and departed the realm, leaving a portion of their power in the hands of their handmaiden, Hylia."_ The three colored lights came together into one point and vanished. The image pulled back to reveal a white clad figure watching over the place where the Goddesses had departed.

" _But you already know that story. This is about what happens next."_ The feeling of anticipation could have been cut with a knife. Lucy forced herself to keep breathing.

 _This is intense..._ She thought, exhaling and reaching for a cup of something to drink. Her mouth had been hanging open and was feeling quite dry. _This is awesome!_

" _Chaos did not rest easy as portions of him were tamed by the life Farore created, fenced into pattern and order by Nayru's law, and kept from rampaging as it had before by the power Din had left in the bones of the world. The Three Golden Goddesses had encroached on its domain in their creation of the realm that was now under Hylia's watchful gaze. Furious with the insult, it spawned a creature to devour all that was orderly and good."_ Lucy couldn't quite see what now being shown, but it was big, red and black, and had a mouth that seemed big enough to swallow the world in one bite and had a lot of sharp teeth. She felt a shiver go up her spine as it's jaws gaped wide and she heard the faintest echo of a ravenous roar. An inhuman, deep sound fit to make the world shake apart at the seams.

" _This hungry darkness burst free from the earth. And how it feasted... Scores fell to him, whole races of people were forced into the shadows, never to be seen as friends again. For everything that was consumed was changed and warped by chaos."_ There were unheard screams bursting through the images of chaos, confusion and darkness, marring the bright, beautiful world that had been made what seemed like only moments earlier. " _Hylia was not ready to let the work of her kin and friends go to waste, or let the life she had watched over for so long be undone. So, gathering what was left of mankind together, Hylia lifted them up, far into the sky where they could not come to any harm, and cast a thick barrier of cloud between them and the surface world they had left behind.  
In time, man would forget that they had ever lived on the surface, secure and well on their islands miles above the ground, guarded by spirit companions that Hylia had created for their safety. And there they stayed for who knows how long, their lives completely adjusted to living in the air._

 _One day though, a boy was born. And he was blessed, because he would be the first, after eons of time, to set foot on and explore the surface world._

 _His name was Link."_

Lucy was riveted as she listened, leaning forward eagerly, because she could just tell: _This was going to be fantastic!_

-vVv-

 _So damn close!_

I grumbled as the piece of paper I had been working on burst into flames. I flicked it off the table into a waiting bin, seeing as that Natsu wasn't there to eat it. He had gone off on a job with Lucy and Happy.

"I'm telling you Fae, you're stretching a little ways beyond what is reasonable." Nab told me, looking somewhat concerned. "You don't have Requip magic. Trying and make use of actual space before you go trying to make extradimensional stuff."

"I'm not trying to recreate Requip magic." I grumbled. "I'm just trying to find a way to cut back on space for my notebooks without leaving any behind." My biggest problem in progressing in my magic was trying to find some way to carry all the stories that gave my magic it's power and credibility without loading up a massive backpack. I wasn't Freed, I couldn't just whip out some runes wherever I place my gaze. I wasn't Levy, who could produce physical objects with her Solid Script. I had different magic and that equated to different needs and tools.

My first choice to handle the need would be Archive Magic, but I wasn't sure if it would be wise to put all that information, the heart of my magic, out into the general cloud. There were many other people who could use Archive. But their primary power didn't rely on the information they stored on it!

No, I wasn't going to touch on Archive magic, even though I probably could learn to use it right now. Not until I could create and sustain my personal cloud of data that didn't run the risk of being hacked.

Thus, the need for extra-dimensional space. If I could copy everything I wanted to be able to use by hand in notebooks, then all I had to do was find some way to carry it all around with me at once. It would be close enough to me so that I could pick and choose whatever I would want.

 _And because being able to employ hammer space would be freaking amazing. Space Magic? Badass._ The possibilities were endless and entertaining. Just the thought of what I could do if I ever learned how to store kinetic energy was enough to make me giggle like a maniac! (I tried not to do that too often since it made people walk on eggshells around me for days afterward.)

I took another piece of paper and tried again. The last attempt had been describing an area in which space didn't exist, while still being usable and accessible.

Several smoldering ashes let me know that this angle clearly wasn't going to get me very far.

 _Alright. Back to square one. Think about what you want..._ I closed my eyes, clasped my hands before my face and began to hum, drowning out the sounds of the guild around me. Waitresses talking to guest, the clink of glasses and dishes, laughter, and chatter.

 _I want a place where I can store stories, the basis of my magic._

Why? I had dozens of stories in my head and it was already working out beautifully for my wizarding Latin knockoff spells.

 _That story has built in shortcuts. Words that I have already attached a very specific meaning to without needing to create something for them._

Were there similar stories that I could explore to the same effect?

As I dug through my mind, I found that, yes, there were several. But it would take a lot of meditation for some of them to gain any sort of magical effect for me. They were ordinary words that were the cues for magic spells, they didn't sound all that impressive. Or some of them didn't anyway. Spells like 'Esuna' worked because they didn't sound like things you would say in regular conversation.

 _I'm not gonna have to make names for my spells, am I?_ Or was there something to that beyond bragging points?

-vVv-

"Calling your spells as you cast them?" Makarov was sitting cross legged on the bar and eyed me, scratching his head beneath his hat. "Well, just naming the spell has a tremendous effect on a wizard's ability to cast it. It helps a wizard focus."

"But wouldn't that be-?" He interrupted my question and gave me a _look._ I was momentarily confused...then I got what he wanted and sighed.

" _Create a black and red cat eared hat."_ The temporary construction settled onto my head in a warm snug weight and Makarov beamed at me.

"Continue Fae-chan!" _Why the hell does it matter if I'm wearing a hat or not?!_

"Wouldn't it be a liability in combat to have to say the name of your spell aloud? It seems as though it would give your opponent a pretty distinct advantage." The little old man happily patted my head.

"Against particularly adaptable opponents, perhaps. I imagine that if your power continues to grow at the rate that it is, hearing others name their spells would indeed give you a tremendous advantage against anyone that you end up facing. After all, you might be able to tap into the story behind their magic." That...isn't something I had ever considered. The possibilities were intriguing... _Focus!_

"That aside, why would someone do that?"

"In the heat of battle, Fae, who can say what goes through a person's mind? I'm sure you've already noticed that some of our own guild members have different habits when it comes to how they use magic and whether or not they speak in conjunction with it." I considered this then.

Erza hardly ever said anything beyond 'Requip' as far as I could tell. She only made a declaration of any kind when she was pulling out a set of armor or a weapon that she didn't use as often.

Conversely, Gray almost always said what he was going to do.

And stuck right in the middle was Natsu. Sometimes he shouted his spells' name, other times he was too-

"That's it?" I asked as I realized it. "It's just a matter of being centered in your magic?" The guild master smiled.

"Correctamundo, Fae-chan! A wizard who needs to exert a fine amount of control over their magic, or doing something that is less familiar to them, would need the extra focusing power that comes from hearing the name of their spell in their own ears. Gray and other elemental molding wizards like him find tremendous benefit in stating what they desire. On the other hand, wizards whose magic relies less on that kind of focused power, Gildarts for example, have much less need of it."

I contemplated this for a bit.

That meant that I could probably mix and match just about anything that I saw my guildmates do since I had their own stories to draw on for strength. It wouldn't be as strong, and it would probably cost me more magic power, but it would be extremely versatile.

So, going by that route...my issue would be holding enough magic power to be a viable part of a pitched battle.

 _You can store magic in some lacrima...Could I make a rune that functions the same way? Or better yet, model it after a human wizard so that it's self replenishing? Like getting your second wind..._

The bland, factual voice spoke in my mind.

 _ **A wizard already possesses a natural secondary source of power that is not usually tapped known as their Second Origin.**_ I waved the information aside for perusal later. I had another project to research and work on.

Between this new idea and developing easy access hammerspace, I probably wasn't going to be getting much else done.

"Aw, cheer up Fae-chan! You've got years before you should be looking like an old sourpuss." I blinked up at the master before I noticed that my ears were responding to my emotions and were currently laid back in irritated resignation.

 _Damn it!_ They snapped upright with alertness. I felt someone stroke them.

"You are too cute, Fae." I didn't have the heart to snap at Mira's coo. So I settled for burying my face in my arms and trying to melt into the floor with embarrassment. This just made it worse since it attracted more attention, turning me into a spectacle.

"C'mon Fae, don't pout, you're adorable!"

"You said it buddy!"

"Cutest little wizard ever!"

 _You all suck and Mystogan is my favorite._

-vVv-

Far away, completing an S-class quest with Laxus and the rest of the Thunder Legion, Freed felt the sudden irrational desire to curl up and cry. He couldn't understand it. Why did he suddenly feel this desolate and despairing?

 _It has been a while since we've been back..._ He mused. _It's probably just homesickness._ He could hardly wait to see what new progress Fae had ready to show him. He already had a present to slip to her.

Bickslow said he was spoiling her.

Evergreen agreed.

Laxus didn't say anything for or against. But Freed would swear that he saw a glimmer of fondness whenever the Lightning Wizard looked at the adorable little imp.

-vVv-

Erza was coming back!

She had called ahead on the communications lacrima to inform the master of her imminent arrival.

I couldn't wait to see her. Big, scary and intimidating as she could be, I liked Erza. I was also fully aware that this opinion might change as soon as I became old enough to be seen as punishable in her eyes. But for now, I liked her.

I was currently interrogating Cana to try and get some pointers on how to increase my magic power without resorting to giving myself alcohol poisoning. The boozer was more interested in he bottom of her mug.

I glared at her...then I got an evil idea.

" _But why is the rum gone?"_ There came a sucking sound for a split second after I had spoken, then Cana jerked.

"What the hell?" Her mug was suddenly empty and all booze within ten feet had disappeared.

"I'm trying to ask you something, Cana. You'll get your booze back after I get an answer." The older girl glared down at me. I stared back, completely unrepentant. She caved after a few tense moments, sighing.

"Fine, you little brat. It's just like exercising your body. You'll need to cast some bigger spells if you want to get some extra growing in."

"Now was that so hard?" I asked, satisfied. " _Weddings! I love weddings, drinks all around!"_ Cana examined the alcohol in her mug with a raised brow.

"Never heard that one before. Gonna make a show out of it sometime?"

"Maybe!" I hopped off my stool and ran outside.

"Fae-chan, where are you going in such a hurry?"

"I've got an idea to try out!"

-vVv-

The idea involved the illusions that accompanied my stories. If I could describe something and make it _seem_ real, then could I describe something and make it _be_ real? Or real enough that people interacting with it believed it was real, and have their belief and power support my own?

I was testing small scale at first, hiding out in and around the park and fabricating various objects and seeing how passer's by interacted with them. First it was a flower in a bed somewhere, then an extra branch on a tree. I'd worked my way up to a reasonably solid bench before I ran out of paper. Each time someone touched my illusion, it only lasted for as long as they were interacting with it. Then the paper I was writing on fizzled up and I had to start over.

I was magically drained but triumphant when I returned to the guild to help Mira with the dinner rush.

It wasn't everyday that you learned you could _literally rewrite reality_.

 _I'll have to try and find some way to increase the durability of my creations, and extend the amount of time that they're effective._ Having to redo everything over and over again was kinda tiring. _Magical stamps?_ _Same problem as writing out by hand. Too much bulky material. A good guild wizard has to be easily portable... Hmm..._

"Heavy thoughts, Fae-chan?" Levy asked as I came through the crowd picking up dirty dishes with a few quick summoning charms.

"Just a couple new ideas." I replied, levitating the dish bin behind me.

"Well, do you have a moment? I've got this translation that I can't seem to get through..." I almost expected Jet and Droy to appear and start cheering for her. _Cheering her on whenever she tries to translate something...Dumbasses._ The thought wasn't without its affection. For all that they sometimes talked themselves up a little too much, they were still guildmates. Their infatuation was either unnoticed by Levy, or noticed and simply not returned. I was more inclined to think the latter.

"Let me finish this up, and I'll get back to you." If something was designed with concealment in mind, it would take more than a passing touch to get the whole story out of the thing.

After dropping off the dishes, I went back to Levy. "You already checked for invisible ink, or code?" I asked, examining the painstakingly preserved document that her client had given her to translate.

"First thing I did." She said, pushing over what she had managed to translate thus far. "But none of this is making any sense..." I brushed my fingers gently over the covered paper, peering at it intently...It was beautiful piece, an old, handbound book of aged leather less than an inch thick with elegant calligraphy from the early days of wizardry and hidden artwork layered within the pages. According to Levy's client, it was almost three hundred years old.

 _It feels innocent...like a collection of fairytales, but there's more to it...Theories of how humans acquired magic?_ I instantly got a little excited and bent even closer, feeling my eyes glitter eagerly as I focused still further. I was getting somewhere...I thought I was anyway. But then I ran into a blockade. I was missing bits and pieces of the text. I had gotten this far on context, but I needed more...

 _Hmm...A spell for revealing what is hidden in text..._ I came up with several options from Harry Potter, specifically the 'Reveilo' chain, but that didn't feel quite right...

 _Ah ha! Gotcha!_ I snatched the spell from out of my vast, seemingly endless pool of knowledge.

" _Aparecium."_ I commanded, staring down at the paper. I didn't see the words change, but something had appeared right at the bottom corner of the last page... _There you are. "Differo finis."_ Instantly, a slight pressure lifted from my mind as a formerly hidden section of the story now became visible.

"Got it." I said, smiling at Levy who flashed a delighted grin at me in answer.

"You're awesome, Fae-chan! What did I miss?"

"There was a distraction rune right here." I pointed to it. "Protected by an invisibility rune worked into the picture." I pressed my finger over where I had spotted it. "And underneath that was a confidentiality outlay inside the binding." I rested my hand on the book's cover for a moment longer... "It's very old, a lot older than the owner thought. He's off by more than a century. Closer to two or three actually."

Levy was almost vibrating with excitement. Jet and Droy seemed to materialize in the background to gaze in infatuated awe at their crush. Apparently they had bickered and fought constantly when they were younger. Like Erza/Mira levels of antagonism. Such a thing seemed impossible nowadays. They might be self declared rivals for Levy's attention, but they were the best of friends and everyone knew it. Kinda like Gray and Natsu, only with less potential for destruction.

"Hold on! I want to get all this down!" Levy began to write furiously. I paused until she had caught up with me.

"What does your client want to know?" I asked. "I can be a lot more effective if I know what to look for. About 700 years of time is no joke, even if it's already finished..."

"Right. The book's author, any details about them, and then where and why it was written." I perused the book's history for a moment...

"The author was named Mikale Surewyrd. He was a talented Rune Wizard, from Bosco and a minor noble, around the year 47 BM. Anyone with magic was still very strongly ostracized and persecuted. It was a tremendous shame to any family to birth a wizard, so most everyone kept their powers constantly hidden and disguised as normal, everyday things. Lord Mikale suspected that his daughter had inherited some magic from him, so he made her this book. As a way of subtly assuring her that her magic, if she had any, was not a curse and something that made her special and unique." I felt my lips curve upward as I felt the outpouring of love and adoration that worried father had felt for his daughter. "He filled it with codes that he told her as part of her bedtimes stories. He was eventually discovered to have magic and arrested and executed, but she still had the book. He was right, she did have magic and she learned how to use runes like he had..." My eyes widened with interest. "She didn't want to stay in Bosco after her father was killed, so she moved west towards Fiore, in spite of the dragons that lived there..."

"What was her name? Does it say?" Levy pressed eagerly.

"...Justija." My eyes suddenly didn't see the guild hall anymore.

 _ **A tired young woman glared at the chimeras that circled her, their fangs gleaming and serpent's tails hissing in frustration. Her hand curved up in a familiar gesture and she slashed her hand through the air, her eyes ablaze with power, lips curved in a fierce snarl. Fire leapt from nowhere, scorching her adversaries' eyes and causing them to cower and shriek in pain.**_

 _ **Her green hair had been cropped short recently, and she had the look of a hunted animal. But there was still an air of controlled nobility around her that drew the eye...**_

I was back in an instant, wondering if it was even possible...

 _Freed...?_

-vVv-

When I saw Lucy and Natsu again, I got the same glowy, pink sparkling thing that informed me that Lucy had grown attached to Natsu in spite of his... everything.

"You luuuuv him~!" Happy sang grinning at the infuriated female.

"No I don't you stupid cat!" Lucy growled back at him. But she was blushing slightly.

 _ **She is fond of him and admires his power. So cute...!**_ The giggling voice informed me. I waved it off.

 _Shut up and go away._ I told it irritably.

It just figured. There were romance stories everywhere, so why should it be any surprise that I could see and read that aspect of life too?! _I'm starting to feel like a voyeur..._ I almost dreaded when Bisca and Alzack would come back. Everyone knew that they liked each other. Cana was running the betting pool on how long it would take for Alzack to finally fess up. _I personally think Bisca's gonna be the one to propose._ I thought about it... Then nodded. It would just fit the gun toting Requip Wizard to be the one to decide to stop dancing around and just get on with it.

 _I wonder if Cana will let me place that bet..._

"Fae, you wouldn't believe what I got to do on this job!" Lucy all but sang, eyes sparkling. "I got to read the last work of Zekua Melon! A book nobody knew he had ever written! It was easily his best ever!" Zekua Melon had been a well known novelist almost forty years back. But he had died...

 _ **He committed suicide.**_ I flinched.

 _This is why I don't like my magic sometimes!_

"That's great Lucy. You sound like a really big fan of his." The Celestial Spirit Mage beamed.

"I am! I've read all of his books! They're amazing!" That I would grant. It was kinda nice to read something of good quality without having to write it myself...

"You've got good taste then." Levy said grinning as she slid in beside me. "Check it out, Fae-chan! We're not the only bookworms anymore! I swear, I sometimes wonder if anyone else even can read in this guild!"

I left the other girls to their gripping chatter. Erza was due back sometime tomorrow. The master was getting ready to leave to go to conference with some other Guild Masters to discuss stuff. _**Concerns about the Balam Alliance, a trinity of powerful dark guilds that have subjugated or killed off all others**_ _._ But I don't think any of the adults wanted me to know about that. At the very least, they didn't want me to go spreading rumors about it.

Another reason I had a love-hate relationship with that aspect of my magic power. I sighed, leaning forward on my table and thinking...

 _No nine year old should know even a fraction of what I can learn at a glance..._ I made jokes about preserving my innocence whenever Gray lost more than his shirt, but I honestly wondered sometimes...

 _ **No use moping. Sit up, get back to work. And move on. You can't help what power you're born with. Your family doesn't judge you for it, so don't you start now.**_

 _...Right._ I sat up and started to toy around with some more ideas I had to created hammer space...

-vVv-

Lucy and Levy kept talking about books well into the evening, with Fae sitting quietly nearby. Lucy was thrilled to hear that she wouldn't be the only book enthusiast in the rowdy guild she had joined. And after the insult to all bibliophiles that was Duke Everlue, she needed this conversation!

"Oh! I almost forgot! You've read The Lord of the Rings, right? The first book just came out a few months back and Fairy Tail patroned it!" Lucy had been hooked at the first blurb that was published to stir up publicity for the novel and had splurged her limited funds to snag a copy as soon as she could. Partly because it was related to Fairy Tail, she would admit. But as soon as she had gotten more than few pages in, she was hooked. She had stayed awake for several days reading the tale, enraptured in the world that it described...

"We financed the first publishing! Of course we heard of it!" Lucy leaned forward and snatched Levy's hands, gazing into her eyes pleadingly.

"Where's Bella Phantasia? Can you please introduce me to her? I'd die if I could get my book signed by her! A whole bunch of journalists have been trying to get an interview with her for weeks!" For some reason, this made Levy burst out laughing. And Fae... _That's weird..._ Fae looked like she was trying to sink down into her chair and vanish into the floor, her face bright red...

"Sure thing, Lu! She's all but a guild member, I'm sure she'd be happy to sign your copy for you!" Lucy almost jumped up to run home and get it, but Levy hadn't let go of her hands, her smile broadening. "But before anything else...You probably ought to know a little guild secret..." _Eh?_ Lucy had gotten the impression that there weren't that many secrets between Fairy Tail members.

"What?" She asked curiously, distracted for the moment.

"Bella Phantasia is the author's pen name. She didn't want all the attention she thought the book would bring. And damn if she wasn't right!"

"What's her real name then?" Levy pulled her hands back and slapped Fae on the back, who was still blushing.

"Why don't you tell her, Fae-chan?"

"You're evil, Levy..." She muttered at the blunette, only to receive a brilliant smile in answer. "I should start calling you the She-devil..."

"What's wrong Fae?" Lucy was confused as the aqua haired girl finally turned towards her.

"Levy's secretly an evil troll, that's what." She said blandly, the blush receding somewhat, though she still looked supremely uncomfortable. "I'm Bella Phantasia, Lucy."

The Celestial Spirit Mage's world didn't crack, so much as shatter.

 _A little girl wrote that book!?_ People were already starting to call it a definer of what fantasy writing was. _Fae wrote The Fellowship!?_

"I figured using a pen name would make it easier on me once I started to take wizarding jobs. I didn't want any of the work I might have to do to interfere with my ability to take requests."

Lucy was still trying to reorient her fractured mind...

 _Why is it so surprising?_ She finally asked herself. _Fae's already proved herself to be a brilliant storyteller. Her magic's literally made for it! And just listen to what she's been telling us lately about Hylia's Sky Islands and the Loftwings..._ It actually wasn't that big of a stretch to connect the masterful minstrel of a girl who enraptured half the city with her stories to the brilliant author who had fabricated such a detailed and complex world as Arda. _That's..._

"That's amazing, Fae!" Lucy grinned. "You're so talented! Would you sign my copy, please?" Fae blinked, seeming to be somewhat surprised.

"Uh...yeah, sure..." Another thing occurred to Lucy and she battled with herself.

 _Want...to know more...! But...No spoilers!_

"Saaaay..." Lucy fidgeted slightly... "How many books are you planning on writing?" It did say that The Fellowship was just the first part of the story...

"Two more in that story, plus prequel work." Lucy couldn't help herself, she hugged Fae tightly.

"Please tell me what happens to Merry and Pippin, I have to know!"

-vVv-

Getting Lucy to calm down was a job and a half. I reminded myself to thank Natsu for starting a fight that made her lay off as we all took cover in my bunker until the fighting had blown over. I promised to sign her copy of The Fellowship when she had it with her.

 _Still, that went better than I feared..._

Lucy wasn't pushy about her pleas for details after her initial frenzy and her empty wallet didn't let her devote a lot of time to it either.

She was investigating the job request board, trying to pick something that she could do by herself and still get a good net return of cash for her rent payment. Meanwhile, Loke had three different girls hanging off of him this time...

 _For crying out loud..._ I bemoaned mentally, wanting to bang my head against the table top. _Please, try and find something less self destructive..._

 _ **If he's dying, then what does it matter if his behavior is self destructive or not?**_

That was really starting to worry me. Loke wasn't looking so good. He'd been growing paler and paler, degree by degree over the last two years. He still persisted in calling me the Fairy Princess, and he was always very kind and considerate towards me. I sometimes caught inklings that he thought I wasn't an ordinary kid. But since I knew he wasn't human, I didn't think much of it.

 _ **He's running out of time.**_

If Loke had been a sun when he came to the guild, he was now a dying campfire. _No...a dying star._ Still bright, still warm and beautiful, but weak. _So very weak..._

I didn't want to think of what it would feel like if Loke died.

I still felt the empty place in the cast of people that formed my family and my life where Lisanna had once been. It still hadn't filled in. _It still hasn't healed. Just barely scarred over..._

I didn't want Loke to disappear as well.


	7. Remember the Stars

Erza entered the guild like a super charged thunderhead. Power radiated from her, but she looked calm, controlled and even serene. I was then endlessly entertained as she ripped into guild members who had not performed to her standard while she was gone.

For all that she was harsh and unmerciful in her criticism, Erza wouldn't hesitate to lay down her life for any of us if it came down to it. She was the de facto master in Makarov's absence. And all of us knew that and reciprocated the feeling of protectiveness, even if we might not be as capable as she in carrying it out.

She had just finished quietly terrifying Gray and Natsu into pretending that they got along when she cast her eyes around the room.

"Where's Fae?" I waved, standing on a table to see over the others' heads.

"Right here, Erza!" I was rewarded with a tiny smile that seemed to calm Lucy more than anyone else.

"There you are. Come on over here." I trotted through the crowd as it parted to give me unhindered access to the S-class Mage. I didn't hesitate and hugged her. I heard Lucy's quietly strangled sound of shock as Erza's gauntleted hand rested on my head briefly.

"Have you been keeping up on your exercises?"

"Yup!" I affirmed cheerfully. After the scare she had given me the last time I had been idle, I had been doing my utmost to fulfil what assignments she gave me. _Erza when she's trying to be helpful is almost more terrifying than when she's angry._ But in spite of knowing fully well that Erza could turn into a terrifying demon when she chose, even having suffered a minor strain of it myself, I just couldn't find it in me to be as afraid of her as everyone else seemed to be.

"Very good. Checking on your progress will have to wait though." Her smile vanished as she looked around the guild hall. "Natsu, Gray, where do you think you're going?"

"Nowhere!" Gray yelped. "Just- sticking together, like friends do!"

"Aye!"

"Why is Natsu acting like Happy?!" Lucy demanded of Mirajane in a hiss.

"Good, because I need your help." I think the entire guild was listening with bated breath and gaping jaws as Erza asked for another person's help for the first time, ever.

She explained about her assignment to investigate Eisenwald, and the requirement that the master had imposed on her to not go alone. _And to make sure that whoever she took along would be strong enough to survive without her constant protection._

 _Gray and Natsu ain't gonna be happy about having to work together..._ I thought even as Erza handed me a small bundle of cloth. _Probably another piece of clothing._ Erza had an eye for the stuff, no surprise considering she didn't have the same spacial constraints as a regular person did for what she could have available at any given time. But since she was a fully grown woman, there were some things that she couldn't wear without looking...less than dignified and mature, so she would collect it and give it to me.

 _Hopefully it's nothing too flashy or ridiculous..._ Though since I had gotten a very cool wolf hat from her on her last extended vacation, made from real wolf fur no less, I wasn't inclined to complain.

I watched as Natsu, Gray, Erza, Happy and Lucy all set out the next morning.

 _ **The next chapter begins**_ _._ I scrubbed at my ears furiously. _I wish it wouldn't do that..._

-vVv-

It came as a surprise to absolutely no one that the newly formed team, comprised of three of the most volatile and powerful wizards in the guild plus some extras, leveled the guild master's meeting house.

"It just figures..."

"500 jewel that this is just the beginning!"

"That's a sucker's bet and you know it!" I just sighed, sending a round of drinks scattered down the bar with a murmured ' _depulso._ '

I was currently poring through my knowledge and logical reasoning. _Or at least as much logic as I have given this place..._ A prank job had gotten Krov glued to the wall. Upside down. People were too busy laughing at him to help him down.

It was all well and good to accept that I had magic and that it worked. But I wanted to know _why_ it worked.

 _Magic is the reaction of the combined forces of the transformed ethernano inside a wizard, and the lingering power in the atmosphere outside. Because each person is unique, their magic has the potential to be just as unique. Their emotions and experiences shape how they view the world, thus it alters how their magic power will interact with the world. The younger a wizard is when they activate their magical core, the more simple, basic and powerful their magic is. They have less experience, but a lot more emotion. Experience shapes and refines magic, emotion fuels and strengthens it._

 _So why does my magic work with stories? Why can something as simple as a story have such a tremendous emotional impact-_

 _Oh...right._

 _..._

 _Stories are meant to do that._

-vVv-

I always thought that lacrima recordings were hellishly expensive so I was a bit confused...

"Can the guild really afford this?"

"Not right now." Mirajane agreed, writing up some suggestions she had received. "But with the way your stories have been gaining popularity, it might very well become a big selling point in the future!" Mira, in a surprisingly business minded move, had gotten the idea in her head to record me as I spoke, and showed my stories, then selling the lacrima to people passing through the city. _Doesn't seem...right._ It was my magic after all, and selling my magic, just my magic, gave me an uncomfortable feeling. _Because just handing out crystals full of magic power is always a brilliant idea!_

"Wouldn't it just be easier to set up a broadcasting system with live feed?" I asked, tilting my head. "Sure, the initial costs are higher, but we only have to pay once, and the audience grows exponentially without needing to continually buy new lacrima..."

"Thanks, Fae! Now I can say it was your idea!"

"Wait, wha- Mira!"

-vVv-

Bisca and Alzack came back from their scouting foray a few days later, saying that they had been looking for the master and the team that had accompanied him.

I paused, consciously listening to try and get the most recent news...

"They are currently very hungry, but they're all alright and will be back within a few days." I paused when I got some more updates, but I kept those to myself.

 _ **Laxus, Freed and Mystogan will also be in town for a bit.**_

That was strange though...Where were Evergreen and Bickslow? The three of them didn't like splitting up... It made sense that Freed would stick with Laxus, his crush was painfully obvious. _Or at least to me it is._ But it still didn't make any sense that they would leave half of their party behind...

 _Hmm..._

-vVv-

Loke really wasn't looking good. He didn't have any girls around him, a rare occurrence, and there was a lot of stewing misery in his story...

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to help him, but I didn't have much to go on. There wasn't anything I could do to make Loke's fate any different...

It was like watching someone with a terminal illness. You knew that they were going to die, and all you could do was sit beside them and try to save your tears for after.

But...I still sat beside Loke, wondering how and what I could do to help him...

"Why the long face, Fairy Princess?" _You're dying and I can't do anything._ I just shrugged.

"Bored." I lied.

"Well no wonder, Natsu and Gray aren't here. Even Shadowgear's gone out of town. Why didn't they take you along?" I snorted.

"Because Natsu and Gray went with Erza to beat up a Dark Guild and Shadowgear went to work out some upper level curses towards Crocus."

"I've seen you take apart an A level curse in twenty minutes." Loke's voice said he wasn't buying it.

"The last victim had all of their automatic muscular functions switched with their conscious muscular functions." Meaning that the poor guy had to spend all day, everyday, just focused on breathing and keeping his heart beating while his body did absolutely random things, such as eating food that wasn't considered safe, or running into traffic to get to where he wanted to go. It wasn't a good way to live. And it definitely wasn't something that Levy was going to expose me to even if I could read the whole thing at a glance.

"Ouch. So you're here all by your lonesome. Not plotting some new devious way to use your magic?"

"Writer's block." I grumbled.

"Really?" I shifted... _How does he always know?_

"Fiiiine. I tried to fly again...ran out of magic power, fell a couple stories, Mira nixed any further practice for the day."

"I wonder why...?" I ducked my face to keep my scowl from showing, but was rewarded by a chuckle that had some mirth in it. "Aw c'mon princess, don't be like that. You're so cute when you pout!"

"You're being mean. I don't like you right now." A sly hand began to tickle my ribs and I flinched, biting down a giggle.

"Reeeeally?" _Don't look at him. He's making the waggle brow face, don't look at him...!_ I held onto my composure.

 _ **Just a little more. Let's see a smile, Princess. I won't be around to see many more.**_

"I'm disliking you- more and more." I said, voice hitching when he poked a particularly sensitive spot and with the heartbreaking resignation that Loke was giving off in regards to his fate.

 _ **Give me a good memory to go out with, Fae...**_

"I'll buy you ice cream." I gave up. I tackled the banished Celestial Spirit. His triumph was cut off abruptly when he felt wetness on his shirt where my face was pressed to hide my tears from the rest of the guild.

Loke was a master actor though, picking me up easily, I was still rather short for my age and carrying me outside with a call of explanation to Mirajane.

"Have fun!" She called after us happily. _It's so cute that Loke always acts like a big brother whenever Natsu and Gray are out of town..._

-vVv-

True to his word, Loke did buy me ice cream, but I didn't say anything, just clung to his hand. As if that would do something, give him more magic power, make him stay longer...

 _Make it so he wouldn't die._

Loke wanted to die a member of Fairy Tail, his home away from the heavens. No other bunch of people had ever resonated with him like this. Not one of his past masters, or any other associates he had in the Spirit Realm could ever come close to Fairy Tail.

"So why the waterworks, Fae?" Loke asked, looking down at me through his tinted shades. We were sitting on a bench in a park by the sea. It wasn't the beach front, but pretty all the same. And, right now, it was secluded, which was what I needed. This would be difficult enough without gawkers.

I swallowed another bite of ice cream, trying to think of some way that I could broach the subject without freaking Loke out or crying again. My eyes were still a little red.

"You...You know what my magic is?"

"Your stories and illusions." He replied. I bit my lip nervously.

"That's...that was my first instance of magic. But the next time that I deliberately managed to use it, I developed Retrocognition." He blinked for a moment, an uncomprehending look on his face...I steeled myself, aware that I was shrinking a little, shoulders hunching inward.

"In simple terms...the ability to see the past of objects... or people." Loke froze beside me on the bench. I plowed on, hands tightening on my mostly eaten ice cream cone. _**She didn't...**_

"I...I tried not to see." I apologized. "The first thing I realized was how much you had been hurt, so I tried not to look. But every time I was around you I just...heard a little more." It was just like Erza's time at the Tower of Heaven and her not entirely dead love for Jellal in spite of everything he had done to her. Or like Gray's devastated childhood home at the hands of a demon of Zeref and his teacher, Ur, quite possibly the best Ice Wizard within the last century, dying to seal it away and free Gray from his revenge focused mindset.

Loke didn't seem to be able to talk, so I did my utmost to fill the silence.

"I saw that you're a Golden Spirit." I whispered, eyes on the ground, already starting to fill with tears. "I saw how many times you suffered because of a bad master." There were far, far too many of these for me to handle. Hardly any of them were cruel, not deliberately, and if they got to that point, Loke...Leo, had always been able to dissolve his contract, force it to end once the line was crossed. But the power drain that caused wasn't something the other spirits could easily do. So Loke had to watch his friends, his family, suffer alone, or grit his teeth and bear the humiliation to try and make their situation better.

I saw him and Aquarius, the strongest of the Zodiac, worry about the rest of their number when they saw their troubles.

"I saw...I saw Karen trying to hurt Aries, and you standing up to her..." I was crying now, tears rolling down my face.

 _I saw you get banished. I know you're dying._

"I don't want you to die, Loke..."

-vVv-

Loke knew Fae was smart and perceptive. The flash of her ethereal blue eyes across a room could make a shiver crawl down the unwary spine, and she never seemed to miss a thing that went on in the guild or even in the city.

He had...puzzled together that Fae could do something to find out people's pasts, but he hadn't thought that it would be so...so personal for her. All the other examples of Retrocognition he had come across hadn't been capable of tracking someone through an identity change, let alone going back hundreds of years. This wasn't like anything he had ever seen before.

 _But none of those wizards were Fae._ None of them had been surrounded by a loving family and taught to embrace and train their powers. They didn't have Story Magic, whose very nature was to inspire emotion and feeling.

Fae was crying again.

 _Oh stardust!_ Loke panicked momentarily, briefly forgetting that this girl had seen his every dark secret.

Including the fact of his oncoming demise.

" _I don't want you to die, Loke..."_ He heard the words repeated as if from a great distance.

Death. Something that his kind were never thought to have to face. They just kept right on existing, passed from master to master throughout generations.

 _No one has ever worried about me like that._ Loke thought, watching Fae curl up, hiding her face in her knees and sobbing. It was clearly something that had been weighing on her mind for quite some time that was only now breaking free...

 _Because she can see what's coming for me._ The banished Celestial Spirit sighed. He may have been damned. But he didn't want to leave tears behind him. Especially not on Fae.

"Hey, come on Princess..." He wrapped an arm around her and let her cry into his jacket. "You'll be fine..." A small hand clutched the green material and she shook her head.

"No...I don't want another person to leave..." He had heard about Lisanna, in whispers for the most part. No one felt comfortable bringing up her death when it still weighed so heavily on her siblings.

"I broke the law, Fae. I killed someone. I have to die to pay for that-" Her fist slammed into his chest with surprising force, cutting him off as his breath went out of him in a rush. _Yep! Definitely Natsu's little sis!_

"But it's not your fault! I saw it...I saw all of it..." _All of it..._ "I saw the King making the ruling...What's the point of being able to see everything under the heavens if you can't see the truth?" Aside from the earth shattering revelation that Fae had seen the Celestial Spirit king, something no human had done for a couple centuries, Loke was totally cool. _(Just how strong a wizard is she gonna be!?)_ He was always cool!

 _You have a nine year old girl crying on your chest and it's your fault! You are the farthest thing from cool right now!_

He didn't have anything to say that could comfort her.

He was dying, there wasn't anything he could do about that. Even if he didn't deserve it, the Celestial King's word was final. Part of his avoidance of Celestial Spirit Mages was to prevent any of them from suffering Karen's fate due to interacting with him. _I can't do anything Fae...I'm sorry. I'm going to die...and all that can really be done is you accept that and move on._

"Not your fault...It's not..." Fae was repeating this like a mantra between sobs, her grief touching some part inside of him that wished to live... That feared death, and the emptiness more than anything.

"My wizard died because of me." He told Fae, stroking her blue-green hair gently. "There's no mercy after a crime like that. Celestial Spirits are supposed to protect our wizards with our whole beings, even to the point of dying for them. It's the law."

"What kind of law doesn't protect it's own people?" The girl's voice was bitter and surprisingly clear, it rang like a gong in Loke's ears.

"A king is supposed to protect his own over all else...Human's die all the time. It's the one thing we can never truly escape. No amount of protection from any spirit will change that. It was guaranteed that Karen would die someday...So why do you have to be punished for it, when you didn't do anything except try to protect your friends? The law is wrong."

The former Spirit gazed down at the girl with wide eyes. But she wasn't done yet.

"People who break the rules are seen as scum...but anyone who abandons their friends, they're worse than scum. There's nothing worse than that...and you...you just wanted to help..."

No one, human or Spirit, had ever called into question that the laws were wrong. Doing so would mean that the King was wrong for enforcing them.

 _If the law is wrong...what does that say about me?_

That he didn't deserve to die. He wasn't supposed to be weighed down by Karen's death. That dark mantle was still pressing down on him, but there was...resistance inside him. Loke was fighting, standing up, trying to push back. _Karen is dead. That can't be changed. But..._

But facing his death felt very different now.

-vVv-

Loke's arms tightened around me, his emotions ringing with stunned amazement. _**No one has ever challenged the Celestial Spirit King like that in his memory. It never occurred to him that it was even possible for the King to be wrong.**_ His guilt was still strong, but there was something...different about the way he felt now. Something had changed in him.

There had to be some way for Loke to be saved though...It wasn't right to just have him disappear when he hadn't done anything wrong.

Loke had been dying slowly day by slow day in the human world. It's ethernano couldn't replenish his strength like it would for a human. The only way he could survive here indefinitely was if he bonded with a Celestial Spirit mage-

 _ **Lucy.**_ The thought came in the calm, bland voice. _**Lucy can save him.**_

I didn't stop crying, but I did let Loke soothe me into stillness again.

"I didn't think you'd be that upset." I glared at him through still stinging eyes.

"You're part of Fairy Tail and that makes you my family." The only family I knew. _Why wouldn't I be upset, moron?_ He chuckled weakly, ruffling my hair.

"Alright, alright princess, don't go looking at me like that." He rose, picking me up as he did so and shifting me until I was riding on his back. "We'd better go wash your face to brighten up those pretty eyes of yours again. I'd rather not have everyone jump me when we go back to the guild for dinner."

"...ok." I was still upset that Loke would value his life so little as that. But...I was certain in what I had heard. Lucy would, somehow, in someway, change Loke's fate.

We were walking through the streets now, The silence wasn't companionable, but it was understanding. Words that we had kept inside had been said and it was much easier to look at him now that it had been before.

"I don't want to set you off again-"

"You won't." I cut him off. "It only came all out like that because it was building up to it since I first heard your story."

"So you're good?" I gave him a flat look which made him wince. "Alright, poor choice of words..." Indeed. I was in no way, shape or form 'good'. Nor was I completely satisfied. But...I was content with this promise for the time being. I couldn't draw on the Celestial Spirit world in any significant amount of strength to give Loke the relief he needed, even if he still possessed his key. And trying to force a summoning gate to open without the key was about a thousand times harder.

Loke was still chewing over something...

"Hey, Fae..." I looked up at him, his orangish hair gleaming in the dying sunlight.

"What is it?"

"If I tell you stories about...Leo...would you keep them alive for me?" I blinked.

"Of course, but..."

"None of the other spirits remember me." He said sadly. "When I was banished, I was taken out of their memory. Made it so as if I never even existed to them." And for that to happen, for the people that he had literally been with since the beginning of creation, for the people that he had been banished for...

 _Ok...ouch._

Having humans remember him was probably the next best thing he could do. To leave something behind when he finally died.

I took Loke's hand.

"I'll tell stories about the Lion." I promised. "But Fairy Tail will tell stories about Loke forever." His mouth twitched up in an attempted smile.

"You gonna stick around that long to make sure of that?" I...actually considered it.

I didn't even want to think about the measures that would have to be taken for that to even be feasible. In all of my stories, none of the methods of attaining immortality were ever easy, nice or especially good for the person's mental health, but-

"I know that look."

"It's nothing!" A hand came down on my head, knuckles rubbing my scalp painfully.

"Whatever you were just thinking about, forget it, delete it, do something to get rid of it! I don't want my life to be cut even shorter by the master if he thinks I'm getting you stuck on becoming immortal!"

"But all I have to do is-"

"Fae, no!"

-vVv-

Team...Well, whatever the team was called anyway, came back a day or so later. And I still hadn't managed to fly. I was getting closer! I had actually managed to get off the ground with the last few!

"-so help me, Fae, if I have to nail your feet to the ground to keep you safe until Freed can supervise you, I will! Of all the-" Erza wasn't pleased. Neither was Gray, or Natsu. I had gotten about twenty feet off the ground before my rune died out. I was so close!

Lucy was just panicking over the fact that I could even make that much progress at my age.

Master seemed pretty chill about the whole thing. Then again, he hadn't given me the dressing down yet, though anything he said after Erza was finished with me was bound to seem second rate.

And Happy...

Happy was flitting around and pointedly failing to hide his snickers. I shot him a look...

" _Get your head out of the clouds..."_ I muttered, focusing on what I wanted...I was instantly gratified when happy fell to the ground with a clunk and a bewildered look. He strained his wings, but he wasn't budging. Gravity held him in it's merciless claws. _Vindication...~_

"-Are you even listening to me!?" _Oh Dust!_ My mind latched on my magic and I quickly began speaking, or...quoting.

"'Of all the irresponsible, foolhardy things you could attempt while we're away, let alone something to even partially succeed at. What in the world were you thinking trying to do this alone? Are you even listening to me?'." I hastily rattled off everything Erza had said that I hadn't been paying attention to. Erza didn't get mad at me normally, but holy hell was she mad right now!

"And I have been, Erza, I've just been waiting for a break in the rant to do some explaining." Erza glowered, clearly ready to keep right on berating me. But Makarov spoke up now.

"Now then, Erza. Let Fae-chan explain herself, before you continue to scold her. I'm sure she wasn't as foolhardy about this as you believe." I was too glad that the tirade had been paused to bother being offended that Makarov did think that I had been a bit hasty.

 _I'll show all of you..._

I lifted my arms and showed two strips of cloth tied about my wrists marked with amber rune script.

"These read as reflective cushions." I jumped onto a table and let myself fall off, deliberately not catching myself. Instead of impacting the ground with a hard thunk, I just kinda...bounced with a springy sound and landed back on my feet. "All the tests that I've done with these runes with objects weighing up to 300 lbs and being dropped off the guild hall roof-" Which was about 30 to 35 feet off the ground. "-have produced the same results. I made these and tested all of them vigorously before I tried to use any of the plausible runes I made to fly. I had these on my wrists, and got a whole bunch of straw and cushions to land on in case the runes fail."

The anger I sensed started to drop the more I spoke in a calm, rational tone.

"I...I see." Erza's shoulders slumped. "I...may have overreacted." She didn't seem to notice the multitude of incredulous looks she got from other guild members around us.

"I had thought that that might be the case." Makarov sighed with a satisfied smile. "Erza is correct in saying that it would be best for Freed to supervise your efforts since he is your teacher in this regard and has also devised a successful 'flight' rune array of his own. However, since he is not going to be back for some time, and if you continue to take the proper precautions, I have no problems with you continuing your efforts Fae." My shoulders slumped with relief that I couldn't hide upon hearing that. My entire schtick would have been for nothing. had Makarov banned me from practicing.

"Thank you, master." I gave a wide, relieved smile. I wanted to fly so badly it was ridiculous...

"It's no trouble, Fae-chan. It's clear that you've put a lot of thought into this to ensure your safety." The little old man laughed. "Won't be much longer unlike you're flying around this old place like a little fairy yourself, eh Happy?" Said cat was still struggling to get back into the air.

"Fae! Stop it! Get your spell off of me!"

"It's not gonna last much longer anyway." I assured him. "And it's what you get for being a furry little troll like that." Happy's wings glowed all the more brightly and he strained, upward, actually managing to get a few inches of air. "Stop pushing so hard, otherwise you'll-"

Just like that, my little counter spell wore off ad Happy shot into the air like a bullet from a gun. He gave a terrified yell as he abruptly braked to try and kill his speed, but wasn't fast enough to avoid slamming face first into the ceiling.

This brought on a loud rumble of laughter.

"Oi! You ok up there little buddy?" Natsu looked concerned, but he wasn't breathing fire or angry, so I wasn't worried for my safety.

Happy's reply was muffled in the wood, but...

"Well what didja expect Fae to do? You know how much she wants to fly!"

Happy's answer was still incomprehensible, but his fluttering wings said he felt strongly about what he said.

"Oh let it go, you big scaredy cat, she tried to warn you!" Natsu paused, then snickered... "You should see how ridiculous you look from down here though..."

"He understands that?" Lucy asked disbelievingly, watching the conversation between the two partners and best friends progress.

"Natsu's known Happy for a really long time. Since he was born actually." I explained. "Given how they usually eat, I'm not really surprised by this." Lucy considered this...then sighed.

"Yeah, me neither I guess. These guys supposedly have their own code for burping..."

"They actually organized it into a code?"

"I don't know. Happy claims that they did, but..."

"But Happy likes pulling people's figurative tails." I agreed. "You're picking up on guild life really fast if you can already make that call about him. Half of Magnolia still thinks he's a sweet, innocent kitty cat who can talk and fly." The Celestial Spirit Mage gave me a disbelieving look.

"Him?!" I patted her arm consolingly.

"Uh-huh. Got a couple fishmonger's wrapped around his paw. He only goes fishing with Natsu for the bonding. Where do you think he gets all those fish he always carries around in his little bag?"

-vVv-

The summons for Erza to face the Magic Council wouldn't have come at a more inopportune time. She and Natsu were just getting ready to start their match. And regardless of the fact that Erza would almost certainly win in the end, it would have been a show worth seeing.

 _ **Something's wrong**_ _._ The bland factual voice that told me so much about the world said. I waited for some further evidence to present itself. Some kind of additional clue as to why Erza was so shaken by this notion.

But it was silent.

Completely and utterly silent. Not a whisper of anything else came. I was so absorbed in trying to track down that new information that I completely missed Macao making the switch with Natsu so the Dragon Slayer of our guild could follow Erza to her trial and witness for her. Although, knowing him, he was probably gonna break something along the way.

 _ **The entire guild is known for unintentional collateral damage, not just Erza. Her actions were destructive, but her team's intervention also saved the lives of the guild masters and ended Eisenwald as a threat to central Fiore**_ _._

Finally! More-

...That did bring up some questions though. Why had Erza been arrested and charged with responsibility? Makarov had been there and the guild master is the one who speaks for his guild in this kind of thing.

I looked across the guild hall at the tiny old man and saw his knuckles were white on the little staff that he sometimes carried around as part of his eccentric outfits.

 _He doesn't know either. It's worrying him._

 _ **He suspects something might be wrong.**_


	8. Happy Days

I was in a riotously good mood today and it was remarked on several times. I always just grinned and kept on working.

Late last night, I had had another...precognitive flash of sorts. Right in the middle of my 'flight' rune prototypes, I wrote, completely unthinking of what I was doing: _Mystogan is coming to the guild hall._ And right beneath it. _Laxus is coming back._ Seeing two of my favorite people in the guild who were away so often was always a treat.

...And no, it wasn't just because Laxus was my only real contact to Freed right now.

But either way, seeing them was always something to look forward to. That said, something was clearly wrong with Laxus. I had been reading high levels of tension and frustration off of him, though his future plans were clouded with secrecy. I could deliberately look away from certain parts of a story if people deliberately classified them as a secret. Every now and then, anyway. My control over my Retrocognition was spotty at best but Laxus agreed to help me practice all the same.

"What are you so cheerful about?" Lucy asked as she sat at my table flipping through a book, my rewrite of 'Into the Land of the Unicorns', that was going to be sent out for publishing next year under a new name. She was...kinda scary when she heard that I had already completed the first draft. Lucy had gleefully claimed the place of 'proofreader'. The book wasn't that long, even with the expanded story that I had woven into it and she was a fast reader even without her Windreader glasses. She was already almost halfway through it.

"Two of our S-class mages are coming back today." I replied happily. Gray paused.

"Really? Can't be Gildarts already, right?" I shook my head.

"Mystogan and Laxus." Gray sighed.

"Figures. The guy no one has ever actually seen and the lord of all assholes." Erza chopped him on the head and he went down with a yelp.

"Mind your language." She told him. _**Whatever she saw at her trial yesterday has shaken her and scared her badly.**_ My mental bland commentary on life reported. Erza was tenser than a ballista strung at full draw.

"Laxus is coming back?" Natsu grinned like a shark. "Awesome! Hey Erza! Whaddaya say we pick up where we left off yesterday? I could use a warm up for when that blond bastard comes back-"

Erza laid him out flat with one punch to the stomach.

"I'm not up for it and you certainly aren't in any shape to take on Laxus." Lucy hummed.

"Oh yeah. I remember. Yesterday, they said that the position for the strongest male wizard was a toss up between Mystogan, Laxus and that one Gildarts guy..."

"It's really not up for debate." I informed her. "They're just the S-class guys. Gildarts is easily the strongest of the three, we just don't see him a whole lot cause he takes on the super tough jobs that take him all over the place."

"So is that what that board up there is for?" Lucy asked, pointing up to the S-class board on the second floor.

"Yup. Only S-class mages or the master can go on the second floor." I scowled. "Someone tried to steal a quest from their board once too often and got everyone else banned." Lucy sighed, glancing down at the prone Dragon Slayer.

"I wonder who that could have been...?" _Right on target, Luce. Right on target._

"Come to think of it, neither Laxus or Mystogan have been back for a couple weeks now. Not that they're around a whole lot in the first place." Gray mused, pulling himself back onto a chair, rubbing the lump Erza had left on his skull.

"Three months, two weeks and four days. But who's counting?" I asked going back to my writing. I had shelved flight for the time being and was focusing on the storage runes. _Make storage runes that I can use as extra magical batteries and hello unlimited stamina~!_

"Um, you are apparently?" Lucy stated a little dryly. She had a knack for doing that. And the talent got plenty of practice considering the company she usually kept. There was a lull in the conversation while Happy tried to wake Natsu up with limited success.

"Nah...s'all tastesh gud t'me..." Lucy sighed.

"Only he could dream about food after getting socked in the gut like that..."

"Nah, Gildarts could too." Gray objected. "He's a lot like Natsu..." The conversation turned to Gray telling Lucy more about the three absent S-class mages.

-vVv-

I felt the beginning tendrils of a familiar spell about an hour later and my head came up even as the others in the guild started to become drowsy with the potent spell that was being cast. _When did Mystogan get here?_

"What's going...on-?" Lucy swayed before collapsing, though she lasted a good bit longer than most of the others. Natsu had gone out within the first fifteen seconds. He was kinda susceptible to this kind of magic whenever his blood wasn't up and roaring from a fight.

 _ **Pathetic. They call themselves a guild?**_ The whisper of sound in my mind was in Laxus's voice, though I hadn't seen him arrive, either."Hiya, Laxus!" I called cheerfully, looking up towards the second story. He didn't acknowledge me, looking as if he had swallowed a lemon for some reason as he looked over the guild, most of whom were either falling asleep or getting to that point.

"Hello? Laxus?" Still nothing. I was aware that the master was watching me with some bemusement. Mystogan wasn't inside yet. He was probably somewhere up the street, and had just started casting early to ensure that everyone would be asleep by the time he got there.

 _I will not be ignored._

I still hadn't figured out flying, but there wasn't anything from stopping me from getting up to that level while still following the rule about only S-class wizards being allowed upstairs...

I grabbed a scrap of paper and quickly wrote out what I needed. " _Put a stair case here."_ I murmured, pointing to a section of railing a little ways away from the S-class Wizard.

The steps that appeared led me all the way up to where Laxus was sitting on the rail like some giant thunder-vulture. No one else would be able to follow me up the stairs without making it break, and it wouldn't last very long in the first place, but it ought to get me close enough to make my goal. I hopped the short distance to the sturdy railing, needing to haul myself up when I barely didn't make it. I then proceeded to walk along to where he sat as if I were on a tightrope. I was still only a little taller than he was when he was sitting down. _I am short...Am I...Nah, he's just really tall._

I was now about even with Laxus, just off to the side from where he was staring into space and not responding to anything.

I reached out and poked his cheek.

He blinked, coming back to reality.

"Wha-?"

"I didn't write you a daydream, so what were you thinking so hard about?" I spoke lightly, somehow managing to keep my balance on the narrow wood beneath my feet. _I wouldn't be nearly this calm if I didn't still have my bouncy seals on..._ The man looked at me then, eyes narrowed for a split second. But with some measure of concern rather than any real scolding.

"What are you doing on the second floor? You know it's against the rules." I grinned, letting a little bit of sheepish childishness seep into my voice.

"I'm 'technically' not on the second floor." I was standing on the railing next to him, not on the floor. It was a loophole and I was running with it!

Then Laxus demonstrated a narrow field of vision that he had thus far managed to keep from becoming common knowledge. He looked at me...then it clicked.

"Get off the railing before you fall, brat." He told me, grey eyes flat and unamused.

"I would, but rules are rules and the first floor is a long way down..." Deliberately being difficult with Laxus was like playing on the tracks. Risky, but thrilling so long as you didn't get hit by an oncoming train.

"How the hell did you get up here?"

"I made stairs." I replied.

"Ok. And why are you up here?"

"You weren't answering." I reached out and lifted away one of his headphones. "How loud is this playing? You're gonna blow out your ears." His hand came up to take the earphone back rather forcefully and I slipped.

 _Oops._

"Fae!" Mystogan's voice sounded alarmed and I already felt his magic flowing from a staff that caught me before I had fallen more than three feet. _I didn't think he was that fast on the draw..._ I flipped backwards on the cushion of...air that had caught me.

"You can let me fall, Mystogan. I'll just bounce!"

Mystogan sputtered for a moment at that statement. "You! Fae! Why! Gravity doesn't work like that!" The normally unflappable S-class mage looked rather irked at my current predicament. He was just standing in the door, one of his staves in hand. I felt a large hand grab my ankle and hoist me up off of my floating perch.

Laxus held onto me even as he jumped down to the first floor to deposit me back on the ground. He bopped my head with a fist.

"That was dumb, brat." I was unrepentant.

"Why? I was serious when I said I'd bounce." I held up my wrists which still had my cloth bracelets tied onto them, the amber runes looking more like ink on the pale material than magic. "I've been trying to figure out a way to fly for awhile now and I made these to keep myself from cracking my head open." Laxus' fist descended on my head anyway, giving me a noogie had me squirming and yelping.

"You're still a cheeky little brat. 'Technically not on the second floor,' my ass."

"Stoppit!" I beat at his larger form with very ineffective fists as I struggled to free myself. His story read of very deeply hidden affection and irritation. But the dark bitterness that had prompted his negative reaction to the sight of the rest of the guild was gone for now.

" _Grease!_ " I squeaked, feeling my skin become slick to the touch and his grip suddenly slid from its firm hold. I managed to slip free, skipping well out of arm's reach. I let the brief boost spell lapse and stuck my tongue out at Laxus triumphantly.

"Tricky little brat." This sounded like a compliment coming from him. Mystogan had continued forward and was choosing a job off of the board.

"Aw, thanks Laxus!" I skipped after Mystogan as he headed out the door. "You always have something nice to say!" I ducked as a tiny flicker of electricity made for me. I was aware of my laughter resonating through the slowly rousing guildhall as I chased after one of my older friends.

-vVv-

Makarov chuckled as Fae tripped out after Mystogan, so very much like a puppy yapping at the heels of a favored soul... She acted like that around most of the older guild members, but she had a special soft spot for Mystogan since he wasn't around as often as others. The masked wizard often had some kind of treat or present for her, saying to Makarov that he truly enjoyed being the object of such innocent admiration.

But what was more interesting to him right now...

"I see that smile, Laxus." The aforementioned expression of his grandson's face vanished as soon as he spoke.

"You're getting senile, old man." he grunted, thrusting a rolled up paper back at him. The last job he had undertaken with the Thunder Legion. "The joke of a dark guild has been taken apart." Makarov accepted the job and the report, filled out in Freed's elegant hand, with a nod.

"I'm glad to hear it." The distance between him and his grandson was something that concerned him greatly.

Laxus had been very bitter over his father being excommunicated from Fairy Tail and had swiftly become reclusive and shunned the company of others in the guild. When he brought Freed into the guild some years ago, it had been a tremendous relief to the old guild master. It meant that Laxus was no longer forcing himself to be alone. Freed had been an odd one and had taken some time until he became fully comfortable in their guild. But he had warmed up to them over time. They largely kept to themselves, working in a very effective team to complete jobs. _And then there were two._ Freed idolized Laxus to a certain extent that Makarov knew couldn't be healthy or entirely platonic. But this wasn't a major sticking point for anyone, and the Rune Mage was reasonably covert about it, so no one had a problem with it. But they were still very clearly two individuals gravitated towards one another and precious few others.

Then Fae had happened.

Upon discovering her magic, and the course in which her power lay, Fae had latched onto Freed's experience, hungry for any knowledge that he could impart. And being regarded so highly by a soul such as Fae had done some very interesting things to Freed's personality. He became more confident, more certain in using his unique Visual Magic. And he adored the young wizardling in turn. Rare was the occasion when he didn't have some kind of gift for Fae when he returned from a job, and rarer still was the time when Fae didn't leap up from whatever she was doing to embrace him in greeting.

It truly warmed the heart to see the affection that the two Rune users shared.

Consequently, Laxus had noticed Fae and try as he might to deny it, Makarov could see he too was falling victim to the young girl's lovable nature.

-vVv-

Spending time with Mystogan was always a treat. He had ventured west this time on a series of protection, escort and item recovery jobs.

"You got to see an original Archive Hub!?" I asked, extremely jealous. "A new one of those hasn't been made in centuries!" Archive Hubs were storage lacrima, utterly, and ridiculously massive ones. They could take a normal wizard's archive capabilities and magnify them to many thousands of times it's overall effectiveness. They were databases of magic from the time when guilds were still feared and hunted instead of celebrated. The magic and knowledge that the wizards in those days had used was some pretty hot stuff nowadays. Split offs of the Archive Hub lacrima were tightly controlled and went for a ridiculous price in any market. The oldest Hub that had been found contained almost a thousand years of data and wasn't even a quarter of the way filled.

"It was my job to renew the protections around it, so yes, I saw quite a bit of it." Mystogan said, chuckling. "I did not get the chance to use it, or see it in use and it was only a little under four hundred years old." I glared at him.

"Stop trying to undersell it to make me feel better. It's not working."

"Don't worry about it Fae. With the way your rune work is progressing, you'll be at the needed level to work in that field before long."

"I'm not even a real member." I groused. "I've been asking to take a mark for almost a year now, and Master still says no..."

"You're only nine."

"So was Gray when he started working." I retorted.

"Gray had his own set of circumstances that dictated what he was ready for, just as you have your own challenges to deal with." The masked wizard, placed a hand on my shoulder. "You're making incredible progress, Fae. But don't be in such a hurry to leave your childhood behind you. You won't ever be able to get it back once you do." My shoulders slumped.

"Everyone says that..." I had been told this, or some variation of it since I first asked to become a full member after six months of part timing with Shadowgear on their jobs. "I don't see what will really change after I have a mark. I'll still go out on jobs with other people before I try to solo anything. I'll still be Fae..."

"So why are you so desperate to grow up?" The blue haired wizard's question was one I had considered already and had an answer to once I realized just how frustrated I was.

"Because I don't have any reason to stay a child." I looked up at him and saw that he was surprised at how easily I had answered.

"I'm the youngest wizard in the guild, Mystogan. Except for a few people, there isn't anyone I can talk to without automatically being reduced to the level of a child in their mind. I love everyone in the guild, but they have the unconscious habit of believing themselves to be older, and wiser and obviously more knowledgeable than I am. It feels as though they only hear half of what I say, and dismiss the rest because 'I'm just a kid'."

"It could just be your frustration making it seem like that."

"Master, Laxus, Erza, Natsu, and you are the only ones that treat me like an equal and let me make my own mistakes." We sat down on a bench, Mystogan automatically adjusting his staves to allow for swiftest action should the need arise. _He's always so paranoid...Like he has to act in an instant..._

My magic spoke then.

 _ **The Anima must be reacted to promptly.**_ I blinked.

 _What the heck is an 'Anima'? The main definition of anima is a person's true self or their deepest soul. But that was capitalized, it's a thing separate from a person..._ It wasn't the first time I'd heard a strange term from Mystogan's Story and I was rather curious but unwilling to pry.

"So you're hitting the point in your life when you start to crave more independence." I rolled my eyes.

"I'm nine, Mystogan. I'm not hitting puberty for a few more years."

"The mental transition from child to adult doesn't necessarily have to follow the body's maturing rate. As far as I can see, you've been touching on that change since you first came to the guild. Especially after you first deliberately used your magic."

"If it's that obvious, why don't more people see that?! It's not like I try to hide it!"

My outburst resulted in Mystogan resting his hand on my head, combing his fingers through the light green-blue strands.

"The only thing I can tell you is something you don't want to hear, Fae." I sighed.

"Be patient?"

"Be patient."

-vVv-

The next morning, it came to light that someone had stolen an S-class Quest.

 _ **Happy took it from the board because the reward includes a golden Celestial Spirit key and he really does like Lucy. Natsu took it to her for the same reason.**_ This apparently qualified as a ship update.

"Hey, Fae." Gray sat down beside me. "You can read the stories of people right? Do you know who took the quest off the board?"

"Happy did." I answered. "The reward included a Celestial Spirit key so he must have grabbed it for Lucy."

The particular request had been on the board for going on three months. It was possible that the requester would have sent word to another guild of the offer of work and annulled the flyer on Fairy Tail's board.

"Of course he did. Did Natsu put him up to it?" I paused in my writing...then shook my head.

"I can't tell."

 _ **Gray has been given the assignment of retrieving them and the job request.**_

That explained why he was talking to me about this.

"Damn, I suppose it doesn't matter anyway." I poked Gray's hand before he could take off his shirt. _I give it ten minutes before he loses his shirt on the way._ Cana tended to call Gray out on his stripping habits after he had removed his attire.

 _ **She thinks he's hot.**_

 _Good lord I did not need to know that!_ I scrubbed my ears as if that would help erase what the implications of that statement were.

"-idiot. No reward is gonna be worth the punishment master's gonna deal out..."

 _ **There are only 12 golden keys in all the world. They are priced at approximately-**_

 _HOLY CRAP THAT'S A LOT!_ I felt my mouth hang open slightly.

"Fae?"

"Gray...you are aware that there is only one copy of each Golden key in the whole world...?"

"Really? Are they that important?" I face planted on the table.

 _With each key you can summon a uniquely powerful extraterrestrial being that is not bound by the rules of human magic. Foremost being, they can be summoned from just about anywhere without regards for most barriers or blockades. These people have been alive since literally the creation of the concept of the Zodiac, that is, a really freaking long time..._

"The estimated value of a Golden Gate Key is well over a billion jewel..." I said into the table. I heard Gray start, he twitched so hard the bench rocked.

"What!?"

"Collectors would give an arm, leg and several internal organs to have one of them in their possession, they are that rare and powerful but most of all: They're reliable and darn near indestructible. Silver keys warp over time, but nothing is known to be able to break or damage a golden Gate Key."

 _ **Except summoning the Celestial Spirit King.**_

 _You are being remarkably chatty today._

"Holy crap...I didn't think the things were that valuable..."

"They're really only usable by Celestial Spirit mages, and there have been fewer and fewer of those as time passes. But yes, they are unbelievably rare. It's probably the only reason that the job was on the S-class board in the first place. Either way, don't you have some wayward wizards and a flying cat to catch?"

 _And Lucy has four of them. If that doesn't tell you how rich her family is..._

-vVv-

Erza went after Gray when he didn't come back after a day with the missing wizards. I just kept on writing, mentally keeping tabs on updates to their story. I sincerely doubted that anything could hurt them if they were all together. But just in case...

-vVv-

The hall always seemed so quiet without Natsu or Gray there to cause trouble or pick fights with one another and Erza to keep them in line.

 _ **Freed is on the outskirts of town.**_ I rose almost instantly and raced out the door.

 _I might not be able to fly, but I did manage to work this out..._

" _Leap tall buildings in a single bound!"_ I said, activating the bands I had tied around my ankles and springing to a rooftop and scorning gravity. I landed lightly, the shock having been absorbed by my bouncy seals and I started running. Erza had recommended free running to build up my endurance since I wasn't very inclined towards learning weapons like she was. I could tell she was immensely disappointed in my lack of interest.

Running and jumping as if I were in a reduced gravity zone did have its downsides, such as when I overshot roofs. But my safety seals kept me from getting hurt or causing much collateral damage. I heard some people laughing as I went by overhead and I waved at them.

 _It's not flying..._ I hit the roof running hard and launched myself forward for the jump the the cathedral roof. I pushed off with a little more force than before and I soared... _But it's still pretty darn cool._

I landed on the roof tiles, and knew I only had a few moments until the Rune Knights got on my case for being here. I held my hands in front of my eyes, cupping them as if I were holding binoculars.

" _Scanning for Justine, Freed..."_ I mused, voice enhanced with magic.

Nothing really changed as I turned slowly in a circle...then I spotted a glowing beacon in the distance. _Found ya!_ I dismissed the brief spell and started running.

"Hey you!"

I crowed with laughter as I jumped off the cathedral roof.

 _Somebody's gotta cause trouble with Natsu not being around and Erza isn't here to scold me!_

-vVv-

I paused on a rooftop, confused at what I saw Freed doing.

He was using his rune magic, but he was setting up a one way barrier around a certain area. And the conditions for being able to leave the area...

 _ **Two people enter the trap. One person leaves.**_ Only the fact that the rune he was using could be used for more than outright 'death' kept me from freaking out. But the auto-reset was...concerning. There was no top limit on how many times people could get stuck in that. What was Freed doing? Was he planning for an invasion?

I was about to ask, but I looked closer, crouched behind a chimney and watching my teacher work.

If I asked him...would he tell me truthfully? This wasn't the kind of trap that you set up for fun, or even just as a last resort. It took too much energy to be a backup plan.

I looked over the rune circle warily. He wasn't activating it. Just hooking it up into a previously laid down ground work. The kind that could connect several separate spells so they could be activated at the same time.

 _ **He has already made twenty other trapped areas like this.**_ I loved Freed. I trusted him...but this sat wrong with me. It was like hearing nails on a chalkboard in my subconscious. It just made my hackles go up.

Maybe if I went and found the other areas he had already made, I could find something about why he was putting them up. It had to be an experiment of some kind...or... a tournament. That made more sense. Some kind of tournament for the guild...that he wasn't telling anyone about.

All my laughter and excitement at seeing him had slowly been draining down to nothing.

If Freed had made these to not undetectable until he activated them, I'd probably only find what I was looking for if I literally stepped in one. I'd have to either wait until he finished this one, or try and sneak up and get a hand on it without him noticing me. Which...

 _ **Stay hidden.**_

Reading a spell's motive was harder than reading it's intended function. I usually had to touch it before I could sense any kind of motive beyond the general intent.

I stayed hidden on the roof, and focused, trying to discern what feelings Freed was bleeding out through his magic.

Channeling emotion into one's magic power was a very old method of boosting a wizard's reserves. But as magic became more and more refined over the course of time, knowledge building upon knowledge, people learning from their predecessors, the greater the gap between emotion and magic had become. More precise spells needed finer control, which meant emotion was a hindrance instead of a benefit. Kinda like trying to use a fire hose to put out a lit match at thirty yards without getting the wood wet. Not very many people could channel magic like that nowadays. Or at least, not sustainably or consciously. I was reasonably sure that about ten percent of Natsu's normal magic power came from his feelings. Which said a lot about why he was one of the most notorious among us for making a mess of his jobs, even if they were done successfully.

Point being, you couldn't have magic without any emotion at all. So what was Freed feeling right now?

It was like trying to pick out the bass in an orchestral piece through earmuffs. But...

 _ **Uncertainty. Determination. Loyalty. Fierce devotion.**_

 _That's weird..._

Freed wasn't sure that this was the right course of action, but his the object of his loyalty and his devotion to it was enough to motivate him to do it anyway.

Usually seeing Freed made me happy like nobody's business. Any of my guildmates was a warm reminder that I had a family. And they didn't care that I was a nameless nobody.

That warm, comforting reminder was suddenly more like a choking band around my throat as I watched Freed complete his rune trap in silence and watched him leave the area.

 _Freed...what are you doing?_

-vVv-

I wasn't sure if I could behave normally and this nagging concern wasn't letting me rest. I wandered through the city, still using super-enhanced jumping skills to navigate and free-run. My legs would probably feel like well-cooked spaghetti tomorrow, but I was on a mission. What was Freed up to?

Rare was the moment when I deliberately was nosy. My Retrocognition was usually more than I needed to find out secrets. But that worry hadn't dissipated.

 _To make traps effective, you have to put them where you know people will fall into them._ Which meant Freed had mostly turned various sections of the main roads into arenas. They got the most traffic. And the more direct routes that some individuals preferred would also be trapped.

But Magnolia was a big city and for all that I could cover a lot of ground with my current getup, I was still a small girl. I didn't find anything. I didn't want to accuse Freed of anything if it was something harmless, so I didn't say anything about it. _Besides, it's Freed-sensei. He won't do anything to hurt the guild._

-vVv-

"Sweet Ether and stardust, Fae! What did you do to yourself!?" Mira demanded, helping me stay upright as lances of pain shot through my legs.

"I was just free running..." I defended halfheartedly, flinching as my muscles burned.

"Carrying what? You can barely stand!" _OK. Definitely overdid it._ I hope I at least got a good workout from this.

"I wasn't carrying anything 'cept for me." It wasn't magical exhaustion. I still had plenty of magic. It was just my legs hadn't been quite up to the strain of the exercise. _What did I expect? I jumped onto the cathedral roof. That's at least 120 meters tall..._

"Fae!?" _Uh-oh_. Freed was standing in the guild entrance, and had spotted me right away, and I was very clearly unable to stand unassisted. "What happened!?"

"I overdid it free running so my legs hurt." I said, trying desperately to undersell what had happened.

"Fae-chan." the Master's voice was stern as he stood in the doorway, casting a surprisingly long shadow for his size. "What's this I hear about someone running around the rooftops yesterday afternoon?"

"I was just testing my shock absorbers..." I was not gonna get out of this, was I?

"But you were wearing them at all times?"

"Yes master." Well at least he seemed satisfied. I suppose the man who had all but raised Natsu, Gray and Erza couldn't expect young wizards to be perfectly well behaved constantly...

Freed had done an admirable impression of a bulldozer and plowed through the concerned bodies around me to pick me up and set me on a table and look over the damage himself.

"Are these the seals that you made to test your flight prototypes?" I had told Freed what I was going to be doing while he was gone, so he knew about the concept at least...

"I altered them a bit." I explained, wincing as Freed worked my knee gently. "Same concept, but reflecting part of the energy instead of just absorbing it, so I can jump and run further and longer."

"How much did you do with them? Just free running shouldn't have caused that much strain." _Aw man..._

I muttered my answer under my breath.

"...I jumped onto Kardia Cathedral..." Freed was already writing some pain suppressants and leg support runes for me.

"What was that?" I sighed and spoke a little louder.

"I jumped onto Kardia Cathedral." He froze, lifting his head to look at me.

"You did what?" This was not gonna be pretty.

"I was free running, and looking for you, so I needed a height advantage to try and spot where you were with my magic. So I climbed onto the banking guild's roof and jumped onto-"

"You jumped more than 100 meters with one basic enhancement!?" Freed looked angry. Others just started laughing.

"Way to go, Fae!"

"Not bad for a first try."

"Gonna be flying in no time!"

"Shut up!" Freed yelled, glaring at them. "Even with those scripts on to absorb the shock of impact, you're lucky you didn't break your legs landing!" _Considering that the phrase I used was borrowed from Superman, who is, you know, indestructible, I don't think that's a major concern._

"Which is why there was structural enhancements in the enchantment as well." I told Freed, tilting my head. "I'll be fine, Freed-"

"You almost crippled yourself and you think that you're fine-"

" _Silencio._ " Being on the receiving end of a Freed rant is not a fun thing. And considering that all I felt right now was a really bad case of leg cramps, his freakout was not warranted. Even the master had already settled down with a drink.

It was kinda funny to watch Freed yell at me without making a sound. Something he realized and gave me a stern look for.

"Look at the enchantment, Freed-sensei." I told him. "There's no magical damage. Just the same kind of strain you'd expect for someone running around the entire city three times in a single afternoon." I looked at my legs. " _Leap tall buildings in a single bound."_ Almost instantly, I felt the pain vanish and new strength surge into my limbs. All of them. Aside from gaining massive leg strength from this, I had also gotten a significant boost to my coordination, balance and depth perception to be able to perform on the level the spell-story required.

The amber words twined around my ankles and calves in a continuous, shifting loop and I held them out for Freed's inspection.

Reluctantly, he let his Visual Magic activate and he examined the script.

I could tell that I won when his shoulders slumped and he sighed inaudibly.

" _Finite Incantatem._ " I released his voice and the enchantment.

"If you had missed even one part of that formula..." Freed muttered angrily, shaking his head.

"But I didn't." I replied, gingerly flexing my still aching legs. "I may be a part of this guild and hang out a lot with Natsu, Freed-sensei. But that doesn't automatically make me an idiot."

-vVv-

Mirajane chuckled as she saw Fae talk to Freed about the other ideas she had for physical enhancement. Apparently, the Rune Mage wasn't going to let the matter rest until he had made doubly sure that all of Fae's ideas wouldn't cause any irreparable harm.

 _I don't think any of us saw this coming..._ She thought, covering her mouth to hide her laughter. _Freed's a mother hen._ Fae wasn't the type to run headlong into danger like some people, aka Natsu/Gray, but she couldn't grow up in this guild without some lingering effects from regularly defying the laws of gravity, physics and sometimes the local laws too. The boys had needed someone to clock them on the head and tell them they were being foolish. Fae needed someone to fret, worry and cluck over her so her rational thought and desire to see everyone around her happy would kick in. Once that happened, she would self moderate her behavior without any further instruction.

The two green heads were sitting together alone at Fae's table as the little girl scribbled out various things on some paper. Every now and then, people could catch flashes or images flickering around the area as the hundreds of stories Fae never told gave her material and strength to shape her magic with.

"No."

"But it would be so cool! And flying comes with it automatically!"

"This 'Super Saiyan' enhancement will kill you unless you are already so strong that it almost wouldn't make a difference! Until the day comes with you can beat Natsu in an arm wrestling match using only your pinkie, this is forbidden!"

And just like Fae needed someone to worry over her, Freed needed someone to exasperate him and draw him out of his self imposed shell.

 _They're good for each other._ Mira smiled, seeing the sibling like bond, loving it and missing her own sister. Just like she did every day for the last two years.

Almost unbidden, all the different things Fae had said showing her remarkable, uncanny insight came to the surface of her mind.

" _The weight of loss never goes away. We just learn how to carry it."_

" _Grief is love with no place left to go."_ And the last one, something that told Mira that Fae wasn't quite done mourning either...

" _Goodbye hurts the most when the story wasn't finished."_

Mira watched as Fae reached up and drew an impressive handlebar mustache on Freed's face, and she laughed harder, louder and more joyfully than she had before.

-vVv-

I blamed the supernatural effects of ethernano when I was able to move without pain two days after my escapade, which had already become part of the guild's stories: 'Fae's run'. Laxus had left town, but Freed hadn't gone with him. It hadn't stopped him from briefly looking like a lost puppy, but he had stayed and not felt...terribly sorry about it.

 _Well. Only a little._

I'm not sure who Freed thought he was fooling. Everyone knew that he had a crush on Laxus. Cana was running the betting pool. Primary bets were that Laxus was dense enough to not notice Freed at his most obvious, or that Freed had denied so hard that Laxus was ignoring it.

I wasn't allowed to place a bet on the matter. At first I had thought it was due to emotional attachment alone, but Macau had let slip that that wasn't the only reason. Since I had Retrocognition, I could always verify what had happened in the past. And because Freed had apparently elected himself my mother/big brother, I could also influence him however I chose. Thus, I was locked out of the bet due to an unfair advantage.

I got them all back by refusing to tell to them the facts of the matter. (Laxus was straight, Freed knew it. Freed liked Laxus. Laxus knew it.)

I was currently trying to puzzle out how best to ask Freed about the various rune traps in the city without seeming like a nosy, paranoid stalker. And I was stuck bar-tending since Freed literally growled whenever I so much as glanced towards some more experimental material.

"You can't keep me from getting hurt forever, sensei." I told him as he glared haughtily at a patron calling for another drink.

"Magic isn't supposed to hurt!"

"What world are you from?" I asked, bluntly. "Everything I'm doing, I'm literally making up as I go. I don't know anything for certain."

"Which is why you have to be careful!"

"I am being careful! I do at least a dozen small scale runs before I trust any new array! What would it take to make you feel better? Wearing a suit of bubble wrap!?" He looked at me with an expression I knew all too well. "You have no idea what I just said." I sighed and reached under the counter for my notebook. " _Create a 1 by 2 foot length of 5/16 inch bubble wrap."_

The material appeared attached to the lip of the counter and Freed looked at it askance.

"What is this?"

"Prototype of a packaging material I'm designing." I told him. "Also, viable method of self therapy."

Freed spent the next two hours systematically popping each and every bubble on my conjured piece. He felt much better by the end and he had stopped growling altogether! He even felt nice enough to come and further test my Superman jump boost. _Win!_


	9. War

_**War is upon Fairy Tail.**_ I woke up in the middle of the night with those words ringing through my head, clutching my blankets.

It had been a few days since my escapade with the Superman jump and my legs were almost fully functional, just a little shaky for standing for longer periods of time. Freed had followed Laxus back out onto the job that Bickslow and Evergreen were covering, so my chief babysitter was gone. I hoped to be able to actually do something fun again...

But the words pronouncing the onset of a battle were still echoing in my head.

I was awake and sitting up by the time someone came into the dorms to wake me.

"Mystogan?" The masked wizard was standing in my door, silhouetted by the light from the hall, showing that he was carrying all of his staves and a travelling pack.

"Get up, dress and pack. We leave in twenty minutes."

-vVv-

"Mystogan, what's going on?" I asked, buckling my pack closed and checking that all of my equipment was stowed. There were about another half a dozen children around me, different orphans who were also sponsored by Fairy Tail. They were all sleepy and grumpy at being woken, but also scared. I barely knew any of them...The guild was my family and friends all in one. These guys were sponsored by Fairy Tail, but they didn't spend their time at the guild hall, like I did. I didn't...really know these guys. At all.

"The guild hall has been attacked." Mystogan told me softly. "Makarov has asked that I move you to safety away from Magnolia until this matter is settled."

"Wouldn't that be the Rune Knights job?"

"The master didn't want to wait for them to muster and sent me instead." I looked back at the wide, frightened eyes as the other kids, ranging from my age to mid teens, followed Mystogan into the forest.

"So where are we going?"

"Porlyusica."

"But she doesn't like people."

"She dislikes violence more." _And for all that, if someone did come to try and mess with anyone she was taking care of..._ I didn't finished the thought, but the cold shudder of naked terror was telling enough.

I did not want to see what might happen to the poor fool who tried to do more harm to the fearsome healer's patients.

Porlyusica had some shelter set up for the other wards by the time we arrived and they all went down to rest. I was too alert, listening too hard for any sort of change in the Story.

"Where are you going to be going?" I asked Mystogan, eyeing him carefully.

"Given that our guild might be involved in an outright war within the next day, I am going to prepare."

"And what will I be doing...?" I fished shamelessly. I wanted to start getting my feet wet in more than academic work. I had several combat spells that I wanted to try out, none of which I wanted to test on my guildmates.

The older wizard looked down at me with what I interpreted as a flat stare. It was kinda hard to tell with the mask and all.

"I was going to take you with me." Excitement flared in my chest and I resisted the impulse to bounce on the balls of my feet like an excited puppy.

"Where are we going?"

"A few of the surrounding cities. Jasmine, Greenacre, and White Birch to start." _**All of those are Phantom Lord bases.**_

-vVv-

I looked right at Master Makarov when Mystogan took me along to see him in the quiet, dark evening. He seemed somewhat surprised to see me there, but I didn't let him start to question why I wasn't with the other children.

"Master, does this whole thing have anything to do with the recent trouble with Phantom Lord?"

Phantom Lord hadn't always been Fairy Tail's rival. Actually, Jose and Makarov had once been amiable acquaintances. But once both had gotten a little too far into their cups and made it a game of bragging, things had gone south quickly.

Jose had started to insult and belittle Makarov's guild, then moved on to harassing someone he had brought with him to the meeting. Namely a seven year old Laxus. To no one's surprise, Makarov had stepped up and delivered a righteous beat down to the offender and sent him running, defeated and humiliated with a severely damaged reputation.

That event, and Fairy Tail's subsequent rise to number one guild in Fiore and many kingdoms beyond as well, had poisoned Jose with hatred and jealousy.

Every time a Fairy met a Phantom, there was tension and more often than not, someone got hurt. Makarov had issued a blanket order to avoid going on jobs in the towns where they had a representative branch to try and reduce the chance of conflict.

Right now, Mystogan had gotten wind that within a day or so, Phantom Lord would attack our guild.

The guild master looked at me for a long moment...

"You just read everything I was about to explain to you right now with your magic, didn't you?"

"...I didn't mean to?" I wasn't even convincing myself that I actually meant that. Makarov sighed.

"Right...Fae-chan, you're going to make me lose my hair."

"Maybe so, master. But I can't be as bad the others. I haven't blown anything up yet!"

"The fact that you say 'yet' worries me greatly...How many explosive spells have you cooked up?"

"...Do I have to answer that?"

-vVv-

 _This has got to be the most messed up field trip, ever._ I thought as I clung to Mystogan's side as we whirled through the air in the form of mist, his preferred method of speedy travel. I had jury rigged a way to share spells between us in order to preserve his magic power. It was disorienting, but a fun way to travel.

" _We will be moving quickly, but not necessarily quietly. Or chief purpose will be to disrupt communications and keep Jose from calling in an army of reinforcements." So this had made me plop down and write out a 'shatter' spell. Something that would deal a lot of damage to crystals and similar structures._

" _For the lacrima." I had said cheekily when Mystogan asked what I was doing. "You've already got that white noise function on your Archive chip to keep spells from getting through, but paired lacrima can't be blocked by Archive magic." Mystogan had looked at me for a long moment, then spoken._

" _Every now and then, I think you have done something like this before."_

" _I haven't, but there are who knows how many stories in my head about this kind of thing. Call it extreme vicarious living."_

-vVv-

Mystogan checked every now and then, whenever he left a ruined Phantom Lord base behind him, that Fae's strength was still up and she wasn't straining herself too hard. As far as he knew, she had never used this much magic consistently in a row. He was cheating, he could simply use his staves to draw on the latent magic that filled the air of this world and go on indefinitely, giving the impression of near infinite stamina. But little Fae was an Earthland wizard and subject to their rules.

She constantly surprised him, and as he had guessed, she was nearly indispensable for completing their errand quickly. As soon as he put her down on the ground of the enemy base, she would crouch and press her hands to the ground with her eyes closed. Then she would rise, and quickly list off the base's state, how many people were present and if any of them were true threats.

Jose preferred to keep the cream of the crop close at hand where he could keep an eye on them and work on tying them to him as securely as possible. So Mystogan wasn't surprised that even Fae with her limited combat magic could handle their enemies. Though her fighting style was something to behold...

" _Getsuga Tensho!"_ She cried, clasping her hands together and bring them around in a wide arc that sent a blade of fast moving energy towards the flagpole of the base they currently were raiding, sending it toppling to the ground.

"What was that story from, Fae?" He asked as she scampered up to him with their prize. She flashed a grin.

"Another big one about shinigami, demons and lots of swords!" He smiled at her ceaseless energy.

"This flag is for Erza then, I take it?"

"Yup!" Her smile froze for a second and she seemed to be gazing far away into the distance...

"Fae?"

"I just saw why Phantom Lord's attacking us." She admitted, her humor gone. "Or the excuse they're using anyway." Mystogan knelt before her, surrounded by unconscious wizards.

"What's wrong?" She shook her head.

"Never mind, Mystogan, it can wait until we've gotten away from here." She held out her hand expectantly and he reached down and took her small hand in his own, already pulling out the appropriate staff for their travelling spell.

 _I hardly even think of myself as the Edolas Prince anymore, banished or otherwise._ He mused, as he took both himself and Fae to their next target, using the chance to assess her magic reserves. _I'm more Mystogan of Fairy Tail than I ever was the prince..._ He glanced down at Fae with a warm smile. _I think I like being Mystogan more than Jellal._

-vVv-

They took a short break and Mystogan had Fae eat a small snack and drink something.

"So why did Phantom Lord decide to make their biggest mistake now of all times?" He asked, sitting down beside her.

"You know Lucy?"

"Celestial Spirit Mage that you hang around with? The new bookworm that's made Levy so happy?" Fae sometimes forgot that Mystogan carried a lacrima crystal linked to the main tele-crystal that sat in the guild hall. He used it to give updates on missions or get new information.

"Yeah...apparently she's a runaway heiress and her dad wants her back. So he put out a job request to some of the guilds that would take that kind of thing and Phantom Lord picked it up because Porla knew that she's a new member of Fairy Tail." Fae was very subdued as she said this, staring into her the depths of her water bottle in such a way that made Mystogan feel for her keenly. She was so young, and yet she was burdened with so much...

It was oddly reminiscent of how he had been at a young age, wandering Earthland and closing Anima wherever he found them. But unlike him, Fae hadn't asked for this knowledge.

"Do you need to rest for a little longer? I think I can handle the next one alone?" Fae gave him a look, eyes twinkling with mischief and admiration.

"I think you could do all of them!" He coughed behind his mask, face burning slightly.

"Well, I don't think-"

"Pfff, you totally could! You're awesome, Mystogan!" _Moments like this, I definitely prefer being Mystogan to Jellal._

-vVv-

It was early evening now and we had been doing this all day, for the last two days. We had hardly slowed down since Phantom Lord's first act of aggression made it clear that war was upon us. I wasn't sure if Mystogan slept or not, but I just conked out for about six hours, knowing that pushing myself further would be detrimental. The shortness of the recovery time was encouraging, as it showed that my training had really paid off. (Although, it probably helped that Mystogan made me take breaks so as to keep up my magic reserves. It had been very strange, but enjoyable lunch entertainment watching him flatten the base in Greenacre. A couple of the Phantom's tried to go for me and ended up on the wrong side of a terrifying illusion of a hoard of zombies clawing their way out of the ground, all moaning: 'Hungry'. Who ever said the illusionist couldn't be useful, huh?)

I jerked sharply, eyes widening as the update rang through my mind.

 _ **Makarov has fallen. His magic is drained. A seal on the air around him keeps the ethernano from entering him. He is slowly consuming the little magic he still has in order to keep himself alive.**_ Alongside this, I saw a timer with about 18 hours on it that began counting down. At the same time, there was a...bar gauge of some kind that had a bar of light blue at the bottom. This gauge started to drop, very...slowly.

 _The timer: how long he can last until his body depletes the magic that he still has. The gauge, how much magic he has._

I had felt when Makarov declared war, and when our guild came calling at Phantom Lord's main base. That had made me feel proud and fierce. This just made me feel scared and worried about the vague emptiness I felt when I felt down the 'what if' possibility. I let another two Stunning spells fly out, taking down a pair of enemy wizards in the way, and made a beeline for Mystogan.

"Mystogan!" It said a lot about his actual power level when he paralyzed the twenty or so remaining thugs and low level wizards, planting his staff upright in the ground to sustain the spell as he turned towards me.

"Fae, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" I shook my head, trembling from more fear than exhaustion.

"It's the Master, Mystogan! His magic's been drained dry!" I felt my eyes well up a little. "He's not gonna last long. He needs more power soon!"

"And it would have to be what's already assimilated to his system otherwise it runs the risk of just killing him outright." Mystogan realized, growling in a rare show of emotions. "At his age-"

"We gotta help, Mystogan! Erza's exhausted and can't leave the rest of the guild with the master out of commission! Mira's protecting Lucy and Laxus isn't anywhere close enough!" This information came pouring into my mind as I sought for it instead of it being forced on me.

"And help we will." Mystogan looked around. "Do you have a wide range spell to take all of them without harming them?" It went without saying that he would need all the magic he had to get us to where we were needed in time. Which meant that finishing these guys was my responsibility.

"Let...let me check." I closed my eyes and focused, digging through my archive of stories, searching for something-

 _Huh...Really?_

What I had come up with wasn't from a story per say, but it did invoke one...It was a song I sang to Romeo when he wouldn't settle down as a toddler. It hadn't ever had any magic, but it had calmed him enough to go to sleep.

I had a good feeling about it. I ran through the words once more...then focused on their words in the way I'd have to to bring out my magic. What they meant to me. What they were saying, what they embodied. I could feel my hair stir slightly as my magic crept into the air around me.

I inhaled and lifted my head and began to sing in a voice that was much older than my own childish tone.

" _Sun's last ray_

 _Light of Day._

 _Lazy sunset slips away_

 _Close your eyes_

 _Go to sleep._

 _Dream of heaven, dream of peace_

 _Starry skies, moon's soft light_

 _Heaven keep you through the night_

 _Morning light brings the day_

 _Sun's first ray..."_ The song was short, with a smooth rolling melody that calmed me and when I opened my eyes...

"Well done Fae." Mystogan said quietly, looking around at the unconscious forms of our enemies. I panicked for a split second, thinking they were hurt but then I caught sight of one of their faces.

Peaceful, serene, and a lot more innocent than he had looked to me before.

"If the words of your spell hold true, then they won't wake up until dawn tomorrow and they will be protected from harm." He ruffled my hair gently and I blushed at the approving look he was giving me.

 _ **He likes a peaceful solution. And he thought the song was pretty.**_ It was honestly the latter fact that made me so awkward.

-vVv-

I clung to Mystogan's side as he turned us both into mist and we raced for the Phantom Lord Guild hall. It was getting dark by the time we got there, and the site was abandoned. But producing light was easy for both of us, I just abused a _lumos_ spell a couple times to create some floating lights that illuminated the main base of Phantom Lord-

...Or where it had been rather, since there didn't seem to be anything there, just a giant crater.

Mystogan looked at it and actually considered it seriously.

"Did the others...?"

"Ah, no. They retreated after Master fell. This one they are not responsible for." I pointed to the road that would have lead to the front door, which was scorched and ruptured with high intensity magic and focused intent. "Although that's probably what they did on their way here." _A small army of powerful,_ _skilled and very angry wizards will have a very pronounced effect on the ethernano, even if it isn't inside them._ I bet I could point right to where Natsu had walked...

"I see." Mystogan cast about the area. "Fae, how proficient are you at sensing another's magic?"

"I'm not, unless they're using it near me." I admitted, skittering down the boulders and trying to not stress about the countdown in my head. "Once it's out, it's no longer really a part of them or their story."

"Then can you read the battle? We need to know where the master was standing if we're going to find his scattered magic."

 _That I can do!_

I pressed my hands to the rocks and thought back to what I had only been vaguely aware of during my running around with Mystogan, handling the mooks and hired thugs.

Since it had happened recently and I was in the right location, the story came easily.

"This way!" I called, climbing over some rocks and jumping down into the empty space left by Jupiter, Phantom Lords-

 _-_ _ **giant mech that is walking along the coastline towards the rest of Fairy Tail.**_

Several words that were definitely unsuited to a child's lips ran through my mind. Yet another timer appeared before me, significantly lower than the first. It showed about seven hours remaining until Jupiter arrived at our guild hall.

-vVv-

Finding all of Makarov's magic took most of the night even with two of us working at it.

Whenever a wizard cast a spell, he always put a little more magic power into it that was strictly necessary. Whatever spell he desired would then dip into that pool of collected magic and do it's work. Whatever was leftover would then be drawn back into the caster, along with a little extra raw ethernano that came along for the ride. This rebound effect was something many people studied intently to try and increase the efficiency of their spells.

Aria must have been one of them if he had pulled this off.

Master had been preparing to cast Fairy Law if I read the situation correctly. Doing that required a lot of excess magic being projected into the air around him. Much more than usual.

 _ **The cost of casting Fairy Law is proportional to the amount of targets it is directed at.**_ Given that Phantom Lord's main guild had contained well over 100 wizards, I'd say Master was aiming to take out about 60-70. And since he had to spread his magic throughout the entire property to mark friend from foe, he would have had to let out a lot of magic power. The cost would have been lower had there not been Fairy Tail mages mixed up with the others, but he had figured that he could handle the backlash.

And normally, he would have been right.

What Aria had done amounted to little more than keeping our master from regaining all that power that he had spread out to cast Fairy Law. If Makarov' magical core was a container when full and a vacuum when empty, Aria had put a lid on it, blocked him from pulling in his magic without him noticing until it was too late and he didn't have enough power to remove the blockage.

That meant that all over this property, Makarov's own signature magic was floating, unable to merge completely with the ethernano since it had been claimed and changed by being inside a human being.

I was trash at sensing another wizard's magic once it had left their bodies. I could point out roughly where Mystogan needed to look and hold on to the power as he gathered it, but that was about it. Still, that took enough energy that I ended up falling asleep at my work and woke up with Mystogan cradling me in one arm as we sat outside Porlyusica's hut.

"Myst-"

 _ **It's over.**_ I relaxed as soon as the words passed through my mind.

"What's left of Phantom Lord has surrendered to official custody and they are disbanded." Mystogan told me softly, looking over the... significant number of flags that we had captured. "Everyone's safe."

The confirmation from my magic came when I sought it and I sighed, curling into the banished prince's hold.

"I'm glad..." his hand ruffled my aqua colored hair gently.

"Master says to keep you and the other children here until the Rune Knights are finished with their investigation." _**He wants to keep you hidden without making it seem deliberate.**_ This did make a moment of uncertainty come over me.

Retrocognition, this extrasensory gift to monitor people over any distance, to see the past as clearly and distinctly as if you were standing right there. It was an ability the Magic Council would definitely want to keep an eye on. But not for reasons I was comfortable with.

The moments that are pivotal in life are usually the dramatic or traumatic ones. I could dredge up old fears and terrify just about anyone into submission, or I could recall embarrassing secrets from their pasts and use them as leverage to get just about anything I wanted.

I had realized this long ago, around the time I had gotten good enough with it to see some of the more grotesque skeletons in the closets of my guildmates. I had sworn that I would never divulge the secrets I could read from my friends. Not without their express permission.

"He won't be able to keep me a secret once I become a member officially." I pointed out.

"You're still planning on taking the mark when you turn ten?" _Well duh!_ I'd have taken it years ago if Master would let me!

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You remember what we discussed about patience? Just wearing the guild mark won't automatically make people will view you differently."

"I know...I just...I want it to be official." I rubbed my arms, huddling down on myself. "Even now, there's still the chance that some obscure relative could show up and try to take me away. And without a mark, I wouldn't be able to do anything except go with them. Once I have the mark, then I'll be emancipated from any older family and can go wherever I want!" Mystogan hummed, his chest rumbling behind me as he draped a fold of his cloak around me.

"That's all well and good, Fae-chan, but don't get too worked up. You burned through more magic than you've ever used before in the last few days. As soon as Porlyusica's finished with the others, it'll be your turn."

The pink 'Nalu' ship had gotten quite a bit stronger over the course of the war with Phantom Lord. Since I had been busy fighting, the updates had been shunted aside into a low priority category. Perusing that file in my brain found several other cute moments between them as well as a couple awesome ones. From when Natsu had caught Lucy as she jumped from the tower, trusting that he would be there to catch her, to him thrashing Gajeel, the former ace of Phantom Lord, for hurting her. Frankly, none of that surprised me.

What did was the fact that floating beside Nalu was another ship. _Gruvia? The heck is this?_ I investigated and found that Gray seemed to have gotten himself an admirer who didn't know when her attention was slipping from endearing to stalkerish. Juvia the Water Mage, formerly of Phantom Lord. Watching the moment of when the ship had set sail started me giggling. _Poor Gray..._

The other kids and I were taken back to town a few days after the fighting had ended. I hugged Mystogan, knowing he would probably head out soon, grabbed my bundle of captured flags and raced for home to show off my trophies!

-vVv-

Lucy was somewhat morose in the aftermath of the fight. She felt so guilty...Her friends had gotten hurt on her account, because they were fighting to keep her with them. She had never felt so grateful and guilty about the same thing before...

They had already started rebuilding. With the damages their guild had been awarded by being the victim in the conflict, they were rebuilding the old guild hall bigger and better than ever.

"Stop squabbling and get to work!" Erza roared at Natsu and Gray who had gotten into yet another argument. The fifth one this morning.

"Didn't they get their fill of fighting Phantom Lord? They have so much extra energy they just have to go after each other?" Lucy asked Mirajane as she helped her spread out an array of snacks and refreshments for the working members.

"When those two stop fighting, we'll know something is wrong." Mira said with a giggle. "But it isn't just that, Lucy. Haven't you noticed someone's missing?"

"Well, yeah of course, Fae-" _Oh..._

Fae was still off wherever the Master had sent her to keep her out of the fighting. The one thing both Natsu and Gray could and would always agree on: Fae was their friend and heaven help anyone who upset her.

 _Now that I think about it, everything seems a little off without her here._ Lucy looked around. People were much the same, still working, still laughing. But there was a noticeable space where Fae would be. It was easy to picture Fae, walking along a high beam somewhere, carrying drinks around to the workers or entertaining people who were on break.

 _It is kinda weird to not see her around._ She very deliberately didn't think about her own negative feelings in response to the aftermath of the guild war that she couldn't help but feel she had caused. No one in her guild had blamed her for it, and according the the law, she hadn't been at fault either. She was an adult and had taken the proper steps to emancipate herself. Her father had already tried to get the Rune Knights to bring her back to him and when they had refused on grounds of her being independent and a working guild member, he had resorted to sending job requests to wizard guilds to kidnap her.

But it didn't change the fact that every time she saw someone who was still wearing bandages or who was hurt in some way that she felt as if something sharp and cold had stabbed into her gut. Guilt. Gnawing, ever present, never ebbing shame and fear.

 _He did this...and it's hurt my friends and many other people besides..._ She stopped that train of thought forcibly. Derailing it and letting it land inside a bottomless chasm.

"Where is she?" Lucy asked Mira after her look around. The white haired barmaid hefted a tray of cool drinks.

"Mystogan took her and the other guild sponsored kids out of town to keep them safe. She's due back sometime today." Lucy smiled.

"So that's what he was doing..." She didn't know much about the masked wizard other than that he, like most everyone she knew now, had a soft spot for Fae and she very clearly liked him a lot.

"Mm-hm. Master told me about it this morning. Once Mystogan got them out of the way, he went around making sure that Jose couldn't call in reinforcements from the other bases. He was carrying a jamming crystal to make sure that they couldn't call for help so really it's no wonder he wasn't answering. If it weren't for him, Phantom Lord would almost have been five times as big."

 _Oh yeah...he's one of the S-class mages, the ones that are on par with Erza...How is it that Fae seems to magnetically attract the most powerful people in the guild?_

Natsu, Grey and Erza were the main ones, but there was Mystogan and Lucy had heard that Fae liked to bother Laxus as well...

"Hey guys!" There came a child's voice cutting through the murmur and the clatter of building. "I'm back!"

"Fae!" Almost as one, people turned towards the cry.

The girl was running towards the building site, unruly aquamarine hair bouncing in short waves and her uncanny bright blue eyes shining. Her delighted grin was big and bright in a way that reminded Lucy a lot of Natsu. And she was carrying some sort of cloth bundle for some reason.

"Hey, Fae-chan!" Gray managed to beat Natsu by a hair to scoop the little girl up into a tight hug. Lucy suspected the only reason Gray didn't get punched was because Natsu didn't want to jostle Fae. She stood on her toes to see Fae snuggle into Gray's arms, speaking in a low, happy tone.

 _Well, she definitely looks fine._

Either way, the girl was soon surrounded by people welcoming her back. All work had halted for a while. Even the master had shrunk down again to give the girl a hug, making it look sweet and paternal even though she stood almost a head taller than him.

Lucy wanted to see her as well, and verify for herself that she was in fact alright and suffering no trauma from the guild war, but she hung back and waited for the crowd to disperse.

"Lucy!" She was taken aback as the girl flung herself at her after squirming through the press of people. "I'm so glad you're alright. Mystogan says he's sorry for not being able to come by and help kick the main guild's butt. We were collecting master's magic back at their old base so he could recover faster!"

"Wait, what? I thought you weren't supposed to get involved!"

"I told Mystogan to get the non-wizard children to safety. Fae however was to remain with him." Makarov explained to the onlookers, smoothing his mustache. "Even though she bears no mark, she is a known wizard of our guild and I did not trust Jose to leave her alone if she didn't have someone to keep an eye out for her. Mystogan had his own assignment and he took her along with him. Did you have a nice trip, my dear?" The girl grinned and presented the cloth bundle in her arms.

"Yep! These are all the bases I took down by myself!" Lucy's sense of realism cracked...then shattered. The bundle in Fae's arms was actually a collection of Phantom Lord guild flags.

 _She...she was fighting?! And those are whole base's she took out alone!?_

The rest of the guild let out a cheer mingled with laughter.

"Nice job!"

"That's our girl!"

"Way to go, Fae!" Natsu swung her up onto his shoulders easily, looking very pleased and proud. "How many didja get altogether?"

"Seven!" This proclamation was met with further adulation and admiring whistles.

"Lucky number!"

"Did you have fun?"

Lucy just plastered her head down on top of the outdoor bar top and laughed helplessly.

 _Mom, can you believe these people? A nine year old kid went and took out seven different enemy bases. And they're acting as if she won first place in some competition. Their only concern is if she had fun!_

The thought of the battle brought her right back to her unhappy brooding over what her father had done...how far he would go to take her back.

 _It's probably got something to do with his business. Some deal he wants to make that he needs to marry me off for._

As a child, Lucy hadn't really minded the promise that she would probably be married to advance her father's business. She had imagined all the handsome princes she might one day meet and fall in love with and the one who had captured her heart would turn out to be the same one she was going to marry.

After she had found her dream of joining Fairy Tail, those fantasies had been put away as fond childhood whims. She had a goal, a dream and she was living it every day!

Everything she had now...this family that she had who had fought so hard to keep her safe, keep her with them. Lucy wouldn't trade this for anything. One thing was sure. Lucy was going to have to... _talk_ to her father.


	10. Hang the Stars

_**Lucy is going back.**_ The report made me freeze in horror and pry for further details.

 _ **She leaves in an hour.**_ That was all I could get out of that though. Not why she was leaving or anything of actual importance. Just that she was leaving... And that was not ok. She'd only come along recently, but she couldn't just leave!

It was late morning, so she was probably catching the noon train west, towards her family estate.

I quickly and quietly packed up my books so that no one jostling the table would mess up any of my work, a rough draft for the middle part of my Two Towers rewrite, and I left the 'guild hall' which still hadn't been completed and wouldn't be for several weeks yet. Lucy was going to be heading out soon and I and I was darned well going to find out why. Like heck was I going to let my friends worry about Lucy like this!

-vVv-

I knocked at Lucy's apartment and waited for her to answer. She looked surprised when she saw me.

"Fae?" I hugged her tightly without saying anything. "Fae, what's wrong?"

"You're coming back, right?" I asked in a very small voice. "You're not going back and leaving Fairy Tail?" Her hands came down onto my shoulders and she pushed me back to look me in the face.

"How did you even know I was leaving, Fae? I only decided to go twenty minutes ago." I shrugged. Usually, I let people figure out what I could do. But this looked like a time when I had to say it outright.

"I'm a Story Mage, Lucy. And the one story that I always have a lot of awareness of is my own. Especially when people come or go..." And not always in a good way either.

"You...does that mean you saw me coming? You saw that I was going to join Fairy Tail?" I nodded.

"Right when it became certain that you would." Lucy slowly sank to her knees and stared at me, I could all but hear her thoughts whirling behind her brown eyes. Lucy was a lot smarter than most people gave her credit for.

 _Where is it...? Where is it, Lucy? Where's the question?_

"Does that mean you can read people's life story too?" _Did you know about my past?_ My magic translated what she wasn't saying easily.

"If you're asking if I knew who you were before the whole thing with Phantom Lord, the answer is yes." I scuffed my shoe on the ground. "I don't like to talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable."

Yeah, no kidding..." Lucy looked a little baffled but she took a deep breath and controlled herself.

"Well. Yes, Fae. I am gonna be coming back. I just need to...tie up some loose ends. Just running away from home left problems behind me that Fairy Tail ended up paying for. I need to take care of them so they won't bother us again." I heard the truth ring in her voice and smiled, wide, and very relieved. Now that she'd said it, the confirmation was pouring through my head.

"I'll see you when you get back then! It's Story Night and we're coming to the big reveal of the bad guy in the Forest Temple!" Lucy ran her fingers through my short, brightly colored hair before pulling me into another hug.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, kid." She said fondness and gratitude in her voice.

 _ **Fondness because she loves you and how passionate you are about your work. Gratitude because you don't begrudge her the trouble and pain she brought to your family.**_

I pulled back and cupped Lucy's cheeks, smooshing them gently as I looked her in the eye.

"You gotta stop thinking like that. You're one of us now. And all of us will keep after you until you believe that this war wasn't your fault. You're part of my family too, Lucy. Stop thinking that you aren't just because you're still new." The Celestial Spirit Mage looked someone startled.

"What the heck-"

"I didn't read your mind, just your mood and body language. I can stop saying it aloud if it bothers you."

"I-no, Fae... Thank you."

-vVv-

I woke up abruptly that night, a few hours after Lucy had gone back to put her father in his place about meddling in her life.

 _ **Loke has given up. He dies in six days, 23 hours and 59 minutes...**_

 _Loke...!_

Tracking him down through the guild would be difficult. Mira said he hadn't come in for a few days. And never mind the fact that I hadn't seen him all day, it was the middle of the night and I was supposed to be in bed. And of course Natsu and the others had followed Lucy as soon as they found out she was gone, so they weren't available to help either.

I was on my own for this. So...time to see how a costume change could affect me. I dug out my notebook. _There's bound to be something in here for tracking and stealth... Bingo!_

" _Create a Coat of Midnight."_ I said softly, visualizing the long dark garment. It was a relatively minor item, given how early it had appeared in the game Sword Art Online, but it granted a stealth bonus that would be useful tonight. With the whole Phantom Lord business, the Rune Knights were out and paying much more attention. I didn't think I'd get in trouble, or at least not too much of it, but it would be better to stay out of sight just in case.

The coat appeared before me, just as I had visualized. Long, black and very simple in design. _That took more power than I thought it would..._ I donned the garment over my regular day clothes. It was pretty warm, but that would have to be a cross I'd bear if it meant finding Loke.

Why I was so focused on this I couldn't say.

 _I just don't want him to be alone._

That was it then. I didn't want Loke to die as if he had been forgotten.

 _He isn't gonna die!_ I thought fiercely. _Lucy's gonna save him! He's gonna be alright!_

And I had been...warned by the city about climbing onto the cathedral roof so that method of scanning was out of the question... _Hmm...Idea!_ I hunted about the streets for a little bit before I found what I was looking for.

"Don't have a wand, so this will have to do. _Point Me, Loke._ " I murmured, spinning a roughly triangular rock on the ground. It spun several times before it picked a direction. I snatched it up, breaking the spell and started creeping through the darkened streets.

 _Thinking about it, most people would call this a bad idea._ I thought as I skirted through alleys and shortcuts. _I mean, I'm back here where the shady folks usually hang out, and I'm a nine year old girl._ Then again, if I went out into the well lit streets, some adults would see me and send me home and I was on a mission.

I stopped several more times to verify my direction with my rock before I found the approximate area that Loke was in.

It was the slummy bar street.

 _ **Loke's here drinking himself stupid to try and forget that he's going to die. He can feel he's on the last stretch.**_ Well alright then. That posed a new problem. Even though he was a Celestial Spirit, Loke could still get drunk, it just took a little longer. But this place was definitely one that I couldn't go into without someone getting an attack of morality and calling the Rune Knights to get me home.

 _Then again..._ I tapped my chin. _That might not be a bad solution. Just go in, find someone who is relatively sober, get them to find a Rune Knight, and tug on the heartstrings until they grab Loke for me._ Sure, there was always the chance that this would explode into a huge bar fight depending on how drunk people were in there and I'd get grounded. But what did I care about that? My friend was dying and was determined to make himself miserable even though I knew as sure as the sun would rise tomorrow that Lucy was going to save him! _My magic says she can, so she will, darn it!_

 _But I can't say that to him. I can't...If I said that and didn't have any proof, then it would just make Loke all the more depressed._

Eventually, I decided to go and try to find Loke myself and if someone found me, then I'd resort to Plan B.

-vVv-

Getting Loke out of the bar was surprisingly easy. Dragging a heavily buzzed Loke through the streets of Magnolia was difficult at best. It was easier once a nice Rune Knight offered to help me.

The next morning met with Loke waking up to me getting right in his face. I had hauled him to the guild hall. Stretched him out on a bench at my table and conjured blankets and bedding for both of us. Well. Bedding for him. I made myself a hammock.

"Gooood Morning...!" I sang at him, causing him to flinch back reflexively before he realized...

"Why am I not hungover?" He sat up, rubbing his head. "Not that I'm complaining or anything just..."

"I used Esuna on you last night." I replied, sitting down and pushing a plate of breakfast towards him. "But, alcohol aside, you still probably should eat something." I caught the barest flicker of a grimace as Loke started to comply.

"Does celestial food taste different from Earthland food?" I asked. He looked at me sharply.

"Oh yeah." He said, taking a gulp from the mug I had placed next to the plate. "It's like the stuff here has more variety and flavor, but I get more nutritional value out of whatever I eat from there." I contemplated that or a moment...

"So...you're saying that the entire host of Celestial Spirits have nothing but vegetables to eat? No wonder you guys like it when you can come here." Loke hastily choked off a spit-take trying not to laugh. It wasn't much of one, but it did make me feel a little bit better.

"That's...one way of putting it I guess."

 _Thus begins my effort to keep Loke cheerful until Lucy gets her butt in gear and calls out the King about Loke's death sentence..._

Assuming Lucy's bond and love for Celestial Spirits was as strong as I thought it was, and given how she was picking up on Fairy Tail life, there was no way she'd make this request any kind of humble petition.

-vVv-

Loke was grateful for Fae's persistent company. But he couldn't help but notice that she was forcing her smile every now and then. Then she'd shake it off and it would all be normal again. But he didn't like those moments in her.

"Princess, why are you doing this?" Loke finally asked her. It had been about three days since he had woken up after drinking himself stupid at a bar at a bar with a bright, cheeky smile greeting him. Fae had been a constant since then. Bouncing, energetic and loving her life. Loving the rebuilding and the people she saw everyday.

Fae went quiet for a moment. "...three days, four hours and 34 minutes..." She whispered. Not looking at him but staring across the canal. Her hand tightened in his and he could feel that she was trembling slightly.

 _Three days...that's about as much time as I still gave myself to live._ Loke's eyes widened. _Of course..._

He was tired, and sick of growing weaker and weaker by the day. He had decided to give himself one more week of life before he let go and stopped holding himself together. Stopped scraping the bottom of the barrel of his power and just let himself go to be forgotten. It had been three years since he was banished. An incredibly long time for a train wreck to finally hit.

Fae would have sensed the moment he gave up on his life. Felt it like a stab to the heart.

 _She's trying to make me keep fighting._ He concluded, gazing down at the child who was staring straight ahead with glassy eyes. _Oh Princess...I'm sorry..._

"It's..."

"Don't say it's OK, because you know it isn't." She said in a very strained tone of voice. Had her grip not tightened on his hand, he would have thought she sounded angry with him.

"I get that you're exhausted, and sick of being guilty. I probably know better than anyone else exactly what you're going through. But that doesn't make it OK that you're gonna die for doing what you thought was right. It doesn't make it OK that you're gonna disappear because someone else made a mistake..." Her voice cracked as she tried to keep speaking but couldn't manage it. Her ethernano blue eyes were literally glowing with emotion.

Loke wanted to pick her up and tell her not to cry.

He wanted to pluck the tears out of the little girl's eyes and see her smile and laugh normally again.

But he was powerless against the grief he could see building up again in her eyes. The slow torture of feeling his life slipping away before her eyes.

And in some way, because he knew that she would still be here, remembering him and mourning him, that made it...better. He wasn't happy to die, nor was he ready. But...

"Fae...come on. I guess...there's something you don't know about Celestial Spirits..." She looked at him, electric blue eyes piercing through him and rifling through his soul.

"Oh..." She breathed, eyes widening.

"Your magic just told you everything, didn't it?" She looked somewhat chagrined.

"Sorry?" He shook his head.

"Well, I'm gonna talk about it anyway. It'd make me feel better at least." They walked along the canal hand in hand.

"The Zodiac is an old concept, Fae. We've been around for thousands of years. But our aspects haven't always remained the same. We've died and been reborn as new individuals multiple times with only the Celestial Spirit King remaining the same. I've been around the longest in this cycle, but all of the spirits fade in and out. Once our current aspects fade, we go back to our constellation and we're formed into something new and we eventually come back. Since whenever one of us ends, or is cast out, all the other spirits forget about them, it's just like whenever a new member joins the guild. It's strange, a little nerve wracking, and scary for the new spirit, but it's part of the pattern."

"But you'll still be gone here." Fae remarked. "We'll still miss you." Loke sighed, swing their hands between them.

"Yeah, and I am sorry that you'll feel like that. But-"

"But you won't be sorry that you came when Gray invited you. That you joined us." Fae looked up with a smile that looked a little more sincere and there was a definite sparkle of something devious in her eyes. A little tell tale glimmer of knowing.

"No. I won't ever regret meeting my princess." He ruffled her wavy hair and poked her in the ribs to make her giggle, her smile lighting up his world. "A smart, sweet girl who likes to make everyone around her happy~ She's like a little angel!" He slowly started to raise his voice so people would notice them.

"Loke!" She cried, swatting at his hand. "Cut it out, you're being silly again!"

"Fairy Tail's darling, Celeste D Faerun!" he cried, sweeping her up over his shoulder and breaking into a trot down the street. "Everyone's favorite fairy princess!"

"Only you call me a princess, you dork, put me down!"

-vVv-

I dozed off sometime during my and Loke's 'date', his word, not mine. I called him a sick weirdo for dating a little girl. He promptly replied he was setting the standard for any other guy who wanted to come in and steal my heart.

"Look, if someone's willing to face down the rest of this crazy guild to even ask me out, he's passed the test as far as I'm concerned."

I woke up as Loke carried me back to Fairy Hills. My hand tightened in his jacket, but I didn't say anything...

"It'll be alright, princess." He said finally.

"You're not gonna go drink yourself stupid again, are you?" I asked, wondering if I shouldn't stay up and follow him again.

"Nah. Learned my lesson." _No you haven't._

"Wallowing in existential misery isn't OK either."

"Fae...Should I be saying that to you?"

I didn't say anything.

It wasn't fair that I could see all of this and still wasn't able to do anything to help my friend. Why was I even here if I was just going to watch people I cared about suffer and die? Magic was good and wonderful, it could make so many things possible. Magic was the only reason I knew Loke at all. But why was I faced with this then? Faced with the impending knowledge that Loke as I knew him would cease to exist?

The echo of emptiness that still hung where Lisanna had been in my story rang sourly and solemnly.

I gritted my teeth.

 _No. Not again._

This time was different. This time, I knew what was coming. And I even had a possible way to fix it...

 _ **Lucy.**_

I squirmed out of Loke's hold, all traces of sleepiness gone in the face of my determination.

I knew a way that Loke could be saved. And I wasn't gonna leave it up to the noble idiot to try and let himself die quietly. Screw personal privacy, I was getting other people involved. My determination however couldn't face the fact that I was really, really tired... I yawned and almost fell. Loke steadied me.

"Fae, you need sleep."

"Sleep is for the weak." _C'mon...think! There's gotta be something that I can do to wake up...!_ I went through my standard selection of spells until I found one that might work. I just needed to put a little different intent behind it. I grabbed my head and said the word, focusing on the basic concept and pushing it slightly out of alignment.

" _Ennervate!"_ The spell was normally used to awaken someone from unconsciousness. But if I pushed hard enough and changed it...

The burst of lucidity came and band of amber script formed around my wrist with a timer. _Two hours until the crash hits...OK, good enough._

"Come on." I grabbed his sleeve and started towing him along, away from the dormitory where I slept.

"Fae, did you just use a spell to keep yourself awake?"

"It's only temporary and once the Celestial Spirit King has changed his mind, I will sleep."

"You say that as if it's happened before!"

"I'm a fairy, and I'm gonna go enlist the help of other fairies. We're getting you back to the Spirit Realm, full stop."

-vVv-

Tracking down Lucy meant that I found Erza, Gray and Natsu as well. The door was locked.

 _OK_ _, I can either try and kick it down and look silly when it doesn't work, kick it down and make another repair bill, or just use Alohomora._

" _Alohomora."_ The door opened with a click and I slide it aside to stalk into the room where it looked as though Team Natsu was about to have a pillow fight. "Hi everyone! Loke has something he needs to tell you."

They all stared at me askance.

"Fae?"

"Shouldn't you be in bed by now?"

"Loke, you look terrible, man." The Lion Spirit tried to escape, as he had many times before. I snapped my fingers.

" _Locomotor Mortis"_

His magic was so weakened that he couldn't remove the minor hex.

"This conversation is happening. You can either be conscious for it or not. I'm not letting you run away from this!"

"Fae, what is going on?" I did something that no one should ever do. I ignored Erza and kept staring pointedly at Loke. He was managing to keep his balance despite his legs being essentially glued together. He glared at me.

"I take back everything nice I ever said about you."

"I'll believe it once you're not dying." I retorted, arms folded and with a mulish set to my jaw. Erza moved forward and chopped Loke on the head.

"Don't say things like that to Fae, Loke. Now then..." Pure murder gleamed in her eyes as she glared down at him. "What's this about you dying and why didn't you bring it up sooner!?"

-vVv-

With an intro like that, suffice to say that everyone else didn't let Loke get away so I just removed my spell on him and watched attentively.

No one was impressed with the Celestial King's ruling, but Lucy was downright furious.

"He banished you just for trying to stop Aries from being abused...?!" She hissed. "If it's your job to protect them, then you did the right thing! Why are you being punished for it!?" Lucy was starting to glow slightly. Plue and Happy had taken refuge behind me as Lucy showed the wrath of a star. Glowing, bright and endless. Gray and Natsu looked somewhat scared. Erza just looked impressed. Lucy got to her feet abruptly, grabbed Loke and dragged him outside, glaring up at the night sky as if it had personally offended her.

"Well, I'm a Celestial Spirit Mage. I can close your gate and send you back through it!"

"Lucy I was banished! I can't go back even if someone helps me!"

"Just shut up and go along with it." Gray advised. I felt Lucy gather her magic, the glow around her seeming to intensify under the starlight. An authoritative command rang out into the still night air.

" _Open! Gate of the Lion!"_ A magic circle written in Lucy's yellow-gold magic expanded beneath her feet as she retained a tight grip on Loke's arm.

 _ **The King's words have barred the way.**_

Well, that wouldn't work like this...

The gates were technically metaphysical, the term was only used for the concept it represented. but...Maybe there was something a little more literal to the word choice.

" _Show to me the Gate of the Lion."_ I muttered, praying that my connection to Loke would be enough for me to see what was happening.

Usually a Celestial Spirit Mage couldn't open the gate without the appropriate key as a focus to condense their power down to a fine enough point to activate the gate. What Lucy was trying to do could easily kill her. It would have killed anyone else.

But not Lucy.

Oh no, not Lucy. Not the girl who had grown up loving Celestial Spirits. Who had learned that love from her mother before she had died. Lucy's magic was her way of connecting with her mother and because of that, Lucy could draw on her love for her and feed that into her magic without little to nothing lost in the translation.

The wind started to pick up as Lucy's magic poured out into the air, determination etched on her features. I started to see the vague outline of a golden gate with a lion etched into it that was barred shut with heavy chains across it. Yellow lightning started to crackle in the air as Lucy let out still more magic and focused it all on forcing that gate to open.

"Lucy, you'll kill yourself! Stop this!"

"NO!" Lucy screamed. "I WON'T SIT BY AND WATCH SOMEONE ELSE DISAPPEAR!"

 _An eight year old Lucy begging her mother with large shining eyes to tell her more stories about the Celestial Spirits she had once possessed._

 _Nine year old Lucy watching with concern as the color in her mother's face started to wane. Her discomfort and irritability stemming from the fact that her mother's magic, what the budding Celestial Spirit Mage knew as her mother's soul, was slowing becoming less and less..._

 _A ten year old girl sitting by her mother's bedside as Layla drew her last breaths, suffering from the effects of Magic Deficiency Disease. Watching as her mother slowly faded..._

 _Here was someone who was also fading. But this was someone she_ _could_ _save._

"Lucy!" Erza was starting to see what I was, that Lucy was starting to run out of magic but she just dug into her life force and kept right on going.

" _OPEN: GATE OF THE LION! TAKE HIM BACK!"_

 _ **The King's words have barred the way.**_

Words...I could do words.

I stared at the gate.

The Celestial Spirit King seemed like a pretty benevolent guy. The only way I could see him allowing one of his subjects and friends to suffer like this was because of a misunderstanding of some kind.

" _Show me the life and death of Karen Lilica."_ I whispered, touching my magic and letting all the knowledge wash over me. There had to be something in there that I could use to counter the words of the King...

 _ **Karen Lilica was a Summoner and a Celestial Spirit Mage of the Blue Pegasus guild. She was conceited over both her appearance and her power. She had many lovers and would often allow her spirits to entertain them in her place.**_

(I bit my lip through at the sight of some of the images I got of that. _Poor Aries..._ But I kept searching for evidence. I needed more.)

 _ **When her guild master reprimanded her for her treatment of her spirits, Karen blamed Aries and intended on punishing her by forcing her to remain in the human for for a week. This would have killed her. Leo intervened, sent Aries back and away and took her place, intending on staying out for as long as it took until Karen mended her ways.**_

 _ **Karen came multiple times to beg, threaten and cajole Leo into returning to the Spirit World. He held firm, not willing to bend this time as he had so many others. Every time she promised to change, Leo could sense she was only lying out of desperation.**_

 _ **Eventually, she snapped and decided to leave him to die, closing his gate and leaving him trapped in the human world. She vowed that as soon as he died, she would resume her old ways.**_

 _ **Shortly thereafter, she was killed by another Celestial Spirit Mage, who retains her keys to this day.**_

When I opened my eyes, the air had gone still. Lucy was no longer trying to force the gate, but staring up at the face of the armored Celestial Spirit King.

Currently, the King was holding Natsu between thumb and forefinger, with a vaguely bemused expression.

"Fight me, toothbrush face!" His shout seemed very small against the vast emptiness of space.

 _Oh no...Actually, I'm really not surprised, but what did I miss while I was looking all that up?_

I glanced over a condensed version.

Lucy's efforts had gotten the Celestial Spirit King to emerge to explain his decision to her, because he saw that she was a valiant, kindhearted Celestial Spirit Mage. He would uphold the laws even if it hurt him. And the law stated that Loke was guilty of killing Karen Lilica.

Natsu had gotten furious at the notion that the man, a king, was so callous as to let Loke die when Karen's death was chiefly on her own head.

" _Every wizard when they go on on a job knows that they could very easily die! If_ _she_ _went out and bit off more than she could chew then how is that Loke's fault!?"_ And naturally, being Natsu, this was accompanied by a hefty, fire enhanced swing. I could see a dent in the King's armor and a scorch mark.

Gray and Erza had also put forward their voices, speaking on Loke's behalf.

" _He's been living with this for 3 years, getting weaker everyday. Even if Karen dying was his fault, he's been doing everything he can to make up for it with the time he had left."_

" _Loke is a valued member of our guild, our family. There have been times where I do not agree with his behavior but never once has there been a moment where I did not believe he was a good person who deserved the chance to live!"_

I moved forward, stepping out of the house and raised my hand.

" _Sonorous."_ I muttered before speaking with the Voice of God. It would have sounded cooler if I weren't a little kid, but hey, can't have everything.

"Hey Mister King? Loke is Leo and Leo is the leader of the Zodiac, right?"

" **That is correct, little one."** My eye twitched for a split second. _Oh come on, even the Celestial Spirit King has to remind me I'm tiny? Bah..._

"So being the leader means it's his job to take care of them."

" **Also correct."**

"Does this responsibility come before or after the duty he owes to contract holders who have broken their own oaths?"

"Fae...!" Loke could see where I was going.

" **Please elaborate."** The King's pupil-less eyes narrowed slightly.

"In order for there to be a mutual working relationship between any two beings there has to be an understanding that one will not harm or take advantage of the other. That is not what was transpiring in the event which is being discussed. Haven't you ever asked Aries what Karen was doing to her? What Leo was protecting her from? Didn't she say anything!?" I glared up at the man as the memories from what I had seen made me clench my fists and shake slightly in anger as my own magic leaked into the air.

"What kind of bass-ackwards contract system do you have where the Spirit can't escape from an abusive master?! Is that a law too? Is that something that cannot ever be changed for any reason?" The massive hulking man knelt and placed Natsu down, offer me his hand.

" **Show me your reasoning, you who have witnessed these things."**

I started forward.

"Fae!" I couldn't tell who said this first, but I ignored it and clambered onto the massive palm. The King lifted me up and I recast the spell with an alteration.

" _Show him the Life and Death of Karen Lilica."_

Nothing was said, but I felt the magic pour out of me as I kept the spell going until the King was satisfied.

He carefully let me back onto the ground and stood erect once more.

" **Before her death, Karen intended on keeping Aries in the human world for longer than she could bear. And after Leo's intervention, she locked his gate, intending on watching him suffer and die. Both of these violate the spirit of Celestial Law that binds both humans and spirits."** He looked down at us, a motley bad of five humans, a cat and a dying spirit.

" **And all of you...you humans who spoke in his defense and sought out the truth of the matter, and the human girl who was willing to give her life if it meant he would live. For your sake and the bonds of loyalty and friendship you share, I shall make an exception to the law."** I saw the chains around the golden gate that I could still see begin to fade and crumble. He too began to disappear, turning into stardust and retreating to the sky.

"Yeah!" Lucy cheered, relief and joy flashing over her face. "You're awesome stache-face! Thanks!"

"Well that's a relief." Erza smiled broadly.

"Most definitely." Grey looked at Loke with a satisfied smirk.

"Heeey! Get back here and fight me you big coward! I'm not through with you yet!"

A broad grin stretched across the huge being's face at Natsu's angry shout. Erza was holding him back by his scarf and looking a trifle embarrassed.

"Honestly..."

Loke just looked floored. Then again, the fate he had resigned himself to had just been taken away and the prospect of actually _living_ stretched out before him. I went over to him as he stared at where the King was vanishing.

"How do I pay them back?" He asked in a faint voice. "I have to pay them back..."

" **I imagine the little one has a good idea."** I blushed a little bit.

"Fae?" I hugged Loke, smiling and free for the first time of the sensation of lingering death that used to hover around him.

"There's nothing more valuable in the world than friendship. I'd settle for that."

Loke's arm lifted and went around me, pulling me in close, hand nestling in my hair as I inhaled deeply. Hope, renewed life and heartbreaking relief and gratitude filled my awareness of him as he gently kissed my hair.

"You got it, princess..."


	11. Vacation

Lucy regarded Loke in surprise.

"Me? You're sure?" With how close they had seemed, Lucy had assumed that Loke, Leo, would be giving Fae his key.

Loke nodded a soft smile on his face.

"I'm certain." He seemed to spot something of her hesitation in her face and he chuckled.

"Fae's not a Celestial Spirit Mage, Lucy. Even if she did have Carrier Magic, she isn't strong enough." Lucy felt slightly embarrassed that she was so easy to read but...

"I always thought that her magic was flexible enough to change. I'll bet if you asked, she'd find a way for you to stay in the human world without needing to contract to a wizard." Thinking back to the latest thing Fae had devised for her storytelling and how she was connecting that to her magic... "Honestly, I don't think there's anything that girl couldn't do if she put her mind to it." Loke chuckled.

"Agreed. But I want you to be my wizard, Lucy." Hope and happiness fluttered inside Lucy as she extended her hand.

"If that's what you want, then I look forward to working with you!" Loke clasped her hand with a smile before he faded back into magic.

"Same here..." The golden key with a lion's head on the end was left in Lucy's hand.

 _I've only been a member of Fairy Tail for a few months, but I've already gotten three more Golden Keys! Can you believe it, Mom? Three!_

A lot had happened. It was hard to believe that Loke had turned out to be a Celestial Spirit who was trapped in the human world. He'd been there all along! Tough with how his last master had been, no wonder he had avoided her. People like that made Lucy want to scream and cry.

And hit something. Really hard.

That impulse had only shown up after she had been in the guild for a while. Lucy wondered what it said about her that she was starting to think it was a good idea more often than not.

-vVv-

As I'd expected, Loke gave his key to Lucy before returning to the Spirit World. We had a very impressive story to tell and I was forbidden from using stimulative spells on myself casually. Though given that this had ended up saving Loke's life, Makarov let it slide. I then threw myself wholeheartedly into devising a safe method of flying. Once I got a solid matrix down, I'd be able to pull the sequence out willy-nilly. I just had to get that far!

I wanted to fly, but I also wanted to be able to control it properly. Flying wouldn't do me much good if I couldn't keep myself from crashing. I was trying to persuade (read: bribe) Happy into showing me his Aria magic so I could get an idea of what I was after but the insufferable little troll was holding out on me! If I could just get a solid read on his magic circle, it would be great, but since he wasn't showing me, I'd have to go the long way.

"I guess this cut of salmon will be my lunch, then." I said, pulling out the carefully wrapped and stored package. The blue cat froze and his nose twitched.

"A little brine and salt...nothing really fishy..." He jumped up and chased after me, his wings popping out to catch up with me. He shredded the paper package to reveal the orange-pink flesh within. "This is real, fresh salmon!" Happy moaned, eyes shining with greed as he traced the pink fibers. "And wild caught too! Not farmed!" I held my prize out of his reach.

"Hey, you weren't helping so you don't get any."

"Faaaaae!" I had to dodge his thieving paws several times on the way to the kitchen to fry up the mild tasting fish with lemon, butter and herbs. And I got a good look at Happy's wings with my magic along the way.

 _This should feel more like cheating..._ But hey, I got the information I wanted and I kept my high quality lunch from a reward from a small job earlier this morning.

I was so close to figuring it out I could almost taste it. I had promised myself that by the time Freed came back, I'd have worked out how to fly. I'd already gotten several requests for my safety bands that I had made to keep myself from getting hurt whenever I fell during testing. According to most, it was something I could easily go commercial with but...

 _But that's so...limited._

Going into business making magical items was a possibility. In fact, it was something that many wizards did if their magic couldn't stand up to the stresses and demands of active guild life. They'd use their magic to make items for either civilians with no magic, or specialized equipment for wizards with even more magic. I didn't want that though. I didn't want to stop and make due with what I already had. I wanted to learn and discover more. To push my magic right to the very limits of what I could do, and then find a way past them!

I must have gone through an entire forest of paper by now with how much I was writing. I was trying to persuade Master and Mira to get me a whiteboard or something so I could just erase and start over without wasting so much. But apparently the concept wasn't invented yet and the light-pen wasn't going to cut it for me. If you used a magical tool to write a magical rune you ran the risk of the magic getting confused and then no one was happy!

It had to be written without any extra magic. And as fun as making paper airplanes and birds was, (they often flew around the guild hall and roosted in some very odd places,) I wanted something more efficient.

The rune syllabary Mystogan had gotten for me was a big help though! I could already whip out some basic commands quick and easy as pie!

-vVv-

I was practicing some water magic in a secluded spot near the guild hall when I first met Juvia.

Since there were only so many ways you could manipulate water itself, I was trying to...

...Alright, I was trying to break the laws of physics and chemistry and compress water.

Water was one of the basic four elements that shaped the world. Most of the world's surface was covered in it. Human beings were literally mostly made of it. It was such an underestimated force of nature yet it was everywhere!

If I could pull water out of the air and condense it into projectiles that was fine. But if I could compress it, I'd get more oomph out of the limited power I had at the moment. (The magic storage devices were still a no go. My last four designs blew up in various creative ways and Master told me to shelve the idea until Freed came back from his job.)

 _What about fishman karate?_

That was an idea. The story of one Piece and the Grand Line was a gold mine for weird powers to use and a lot of the characters had a ton of backstory to make them really effective for me. Fishman Karate had a fair bit of story available between Jinbe, Koala and the Fishman Island arc, but relatively little was said about the actual mechanics of the art. Luckily, that was far from the only story involving weaponized water.

 _So if I bastardize it with some waterbending, I might be able to get something out of it!_

I looked at the barrels of water I was using and thought for a moment.

 _Ok...just using a basic water bullet ought to be a good place to start. Or actually, first I should just get the water moving the way I want it to. The force can come later._

Satisfied, I scrolled through my syllabary and selected several runes to string together. Things like articles weren't really necessary right here where my actions would dictate the rest.

 _Water, force, manipulate. Link to: body movement._ The runes, once infused with some magic came to life and settled around my wrists and hands like some strange sort of gauntlet.

I looked at the water, standing there innocently as if it hadn't ever done anything wrong. I reach out and ran my hands through it, feeling how the water interacted with the magic that covered my fingers.

Imagining a half sphere force field, I scooped up a handful of water and had it stay in that imagined shape without dripping. _Ok...Progress._ Treating the water as if it were clay, I tried to mold it into a roughly spherical shape only for it to slip through my fingers. It was still water, a liquid that couldn't be treated as a solid.

 _There's gotta be some way...something for me to cop out on, borrow and rework..._

For treating water as a solid, I'd probably need to peruse more stuff in One Piece. Definitely fishman karate rather than waterbending. At least for this.

 _But right now..._

I let the water return to the mostly full barrel and with a little focus, pulled out about two gallons worth of water. It hovered before me in the air, shifting and roiling slightly on the inside. Biting my lip, I focused on the _manipulation_ rune and guided it through the air, recalling the story of Avatar in my head. Specifically drawing on Katara in this instance. I could really relate to her right now, trying to muddle her way through something she barely understood but desperately wanted to be able to do.

As I moved around the yard. My motions gradually became more fluid. There wasn't much room to incorporate the martial arts I'd been taught in this. All of my teachers were brawlers and very...forward fighters. They'd be more suited to earth and firebending.

I almost lost control of the water as my thoughts slipped towards the other elements but I persevered. Even if I couldn't fight very well with water, it was still fun and relaxing to move it around like this.

"Ex...Excuse me?" The voice startled me and I lost my focus, the water falling to splash all over my feet, but I was too busy looking, very curiously, at the blue haired woman who was watching me from the edge of the property. "Oh! I'm sorry!" She reached out and the water lifted away from my feet and hovered between us.

 _ **Juvia Lockser. Formerly of Phantom Lord. Water Wizard.**_

She made a valiant attempt to smile.

"I didn't mean to startle you..."

"You..." It hit me then. "You're the one who's always following Gray around! He thinks he's picked up a stalker but it's actually you!" My brain caught up with what I was saying then. "No, wait, you are the stalker. That's it."

"Nothing shall keep me from my beloved's side!" Juvia said, her uncertainty fading to passionate daydreaming which I hastily blotted out.

"Not even the fact that what you're doing is illegal?"

"Love cannot be stopped!"

" Evidently." I cleared my throat. "So, Miss Juvia, right? What can I do for you?"

She looked at me somewhat taken aback.

"Well. I was looking for Gray but then I saw you...Are you a water wizard?" I shook my head, offering my arms and their seals.

"I'm a Rune Wizard, but I'm experimenting with it at the moment just to cover my bases." _And because it would be cool._ The older woman-no...

I examined her again.

Despite her somber face, Juvia was only about the age of my other friends. Maybe in her late teens. But certainly not that old.

"Well, I am a Water Woman myself, so perhaps, would you like some...help?" She expected me to refuse. But who was I? An idiot?

"Yes please!" I practically shouted, eyes shining. I grabbed her hands and started talking rapidly.

"I've never met a Water Wizard specializing in Elemental Manipulation this is exactly what I need! If I can see you do it I can get ideas of how to describe it with my magic and that will make everything go so much faster thank you so much!" I have never seen someone so surprised and yet so happy.

-vVv-

Juiva was somewhat confused by the energetic little girl.

She knew Jose had remarked that Makarov was getting soft in his old age, taking in orphan foundlings. A 'green haired brat' in particular. But since said brat was responsible for the biggest sensation in entertainment in the last decade, Juvia had thought that Makarov's taking her in had been a clever move instead of one worth deriding. Everyone knew about the young storyteller. But she had formed her own opinion now.

Fae's hair could be called green, if she squinted. But by no means was the little girl a brat. She was sweet, thoughtful and very friendly. Juvia found herself relaxing around the child, who spoke much more like an adult than a child. Fae was eager, always raring to go try something new. And despite the fact that she wasn't a water mage as Juvia had hoped, the Rain Woman thought she could very easily become friends with her. Fae's talents were many and wonderful and she cheered delightedly when she managed to copy some of Juvia's more basic manipulation with her own magic after watching her do it a few times.

"Ne, Miss Juvia?" Juvia fully expected it to be another magic based question and she smiled warmly at the girl.

"Yes, Fae?"

"Why are you lonely?" The direct question caught Juvia very much off guard.

"I- What?" Fae's pale blue eyes were steady.

"Lonely. You. Why? You're really nice."

"My guild was disbanded, Fae." Surely she had heard about this being a ward of Fairy Tail?

"And that means you can't see your friends anymore?" The question hit home hard and Juvia bit her lip and tried her best to keep the rain clouds from forming overhead.

To no avail. The clouds came and it started to rain, just like always.

"I...don't have friends..." The admission seemed to echo in the drops that came down around them. It was not a heavy torrent, but a steady drizzle that already seemed to be washing away the warm happiness Juvia had been feeling for a brief time.

But her company didn't seem to feel the same way. In fact, she looked up at the grey, clouded sky and smiled as the falling water hit her face.

"Rain...Rain is good." Juvia went still, staring at her in disbelief. Fae just spoke on as though she had forgotten that Juvia was there.

"Whenever it rains, it clears the air. Everything is always so fresh and beautiful after a rainstorm... I love the smell that comes afterwards."

"But...it's wet and cold. And it follows me everywhere." Fae giggled, hopping into a forming puddle with a splash.

"That's why I asked why you were sad and lonely before. The rain is part of your magic, that isn't something that should ever make you sad! It's so cool that you have that power! Don't you know how many people would want to have that? Sometimes their livelihood depends on how much rain they have!" Fae continued to gambol through the grassy clearing, heedless of mud and grass that got on her feet and legs. She appeared to be having a good time. Her eyes sparkled as she saw one large puddle and she took a running start to land in it, sending water splashing everywhere with a peal of laughter.

Juvia watched, amazed and dumbfounded as the little girl who had seemed so at home in the sun turned around and accepted the rain just as happily. It didn't seem to matter that the sky was grey and cloudy or that water poured down. Fae's smile lit the air as she splashed gleefully in the puddles.

"What are you doing?" The Rain Woman finally asked the girl.

"Playing. What's it look like?" She gave her a bright, curious look. "You mean that the entire time that you've had rain following you, you've never played in the puddles?"

Juvia said that she hadn't.

Fae grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off.

"Come on! There are always some great puddles down this way!"

-vVv-

Juvia had always despised the grey clouds that followed her. The rain that had driven so many people away from her. But as Fae played with her, happily using the little bit of water magic she had learned to splash the older girl, Juvia found herself enjoying it. For the first time in years, she enjoyed the rain.

"The rain follows you whenever you're lonely. So doesn't that make the rain your friend?" Fae asked as they rested under a tree. "It always came whenever you wanted company." Juvia had never thought of the rain clouds that had accompanied her like that. They had always been troublesome burdens. Something that she wished would go away so other people would want to be around her. A gloomy Rain Woman.

Fae was looking up at the sky before turning and giving Juvia a long, thoughtful look. She reached out and caught a drop in her hands and brought it to her lips...

-vVv-

" _Don't worry. We'll take care of her. You don't have to keep following her."_

-vVv-

I brought Juvia back to the guild hall for lunch and introduced her to the master. I also dropped a note saying I thought she'd be a good guild member.

Most wizards hoarded their magical knowledge and only shared it with a select few people, if anyone. Instead, Juvia had offered to help me freely. And the history of loneliness and isolation I had read in her past was enough to make me certain that while Fairy Tail might not need a Water Wizard, Juvia definitely needed a home.

-vVv-

Loke came by a few days after I met Juvia.

I bounded up and raced out the door to crash into him. He looked and felt much better after some time spent in the Spirit Realm.

"Shouldn't you be resting?" I asked him after hugging him to pieces for a little bit.

"Ok, that's a mixed message if I ever heard one." He said, ruffling my wavy sea green hair. I'd been keeping it short because it was a bother and it reached my chin now. I swatted at his hands before his rings could get caught in it.

"Shut up, you know I'm glad to see you." Loke grinned and motioned me forward and guided me outside.

"Well, I've got a surprise for you and the others..."

-vVv-

The whole guild heard Fae's delighted cry:

"We're going to Akane!"

"I know that it's normally not really a perk to have a kid along for vacation, but I owe her just as much as the rest of you if not a little more." Loke poked my head gently. "She found me out almost a year ago, I'd probably have been a lot worse off without her."

"I still had to drag you to them." I deadpanned before furry blue paws slapped over my mouth.

"Thank you, Happy. Anyway, these are for you guys." Loke handed Erza five tickets. (Four Adults and one Kids pass. Three day, all expenses paid.) "These'll get you some down time. I know you've all been working a lot lately."

"Hey, thanks man!"

"Akane resort! I haven't been in years!" I nipped Happy's paw to free my mouth and looked at Lucy.

"Oh right, your family was super rich. It's no surprise you've been there!" Lucy laughed, looking slightly awkward at the reminder.

"Yeah, Mom insisted on going every summer. My last time there was when I was about your age, Fae."

"These include passes for the casino? Sweet!" I wrinkled my nose at Gray's comment.

"They let kids into the casino?" _That definitely doesn't sound fun..._

"They don't let em play for money or drink, but there's other stuff around that kids can play." Loke grinned suddenly. "Actually, that's probably too bad. You'd be killer at poker and other card games with your Retrocognition letting you know what cards are still in the deck."

"Loke, that's cheating." Unfortunately, Erza looked deviously thoughtful at this. I began to pray fervently she'd just leave me alone to do my own thing.

-vVv-

The day spent at the beach was a blast! Gray or Lucy went on the rides with me at the park and I managed to befriend one of the spraywhales that people had on hand for high speed rides through the surf.

When they played volleyball, I went looking for food with Happy.

Apparently I was still cute, since I got a lot of free stuff. I plotted with Happy to eat some of it before we got back to the others so as to not have to share. Since one of the treats that I had been given was a piping hot serving of takoyaki (fried octopus balls), he agreed without protest.

On the way back, I spotted Juvia gazing at Gray with dreamy eyes.

"Aren't you supposed to be doing...adult things like settling your lease and moving to Magnolia?" I asked her. She beamed.

"It's all done, Fae-chan! I'm just waiting for the right moment to tell the good news to my beloved Gray." _Poor Gray...he really has no idea what he's in for._ I shrugged, knowing that if I told Juvia that I had insight to relationships and things like that because of my magic, she wouldn't rest until I had detailed a foolproof way to win Gray's heart.

 _When was the last time he went out with someone? It's been a couple months at least..._ Unlike Natsu, Gray was not mostly oblivious to the attention he got from girls. His problem was finding a girl who didn't take his unfortunate stripping habit as a come hither sign. He had mostly given up on finding a girl he could date who wasn't a wizard. This was, for some reason, filed as shipping evidence for Gruvia by my magic.

"Well don't wait around for too long." I placed the drinks and food I'd gotten down by our collective pile of 'stuff' and fished around for my rune syllabary. I'd gotten a couple good ideas while playing today...

"That's right! Time and Love wait for no woman!"

"That's not how the saying goes- oh never mind..."

-vVv-

I was restlessly pacing about the room I was sharing with Lucy as I tried to pinpoint the strange tension I felt in the air. I tried sitting down and writing in hopes that something might catch my attention, like how I had been able to predict when one of my friends was coming back to the guild hall. But to no avail. Nothing seemed to work.

"Hey Fae, you coming down to play? They've got a huge kids section and they're letting kids play a couple of the adult games too." Lucy had already dolled herself up in a long, sleek dark red dress. And that of course meant someone just couldn't keep quiet...

 _ **Natsu's favorite color...~!**_

 _Shut up!_ I smacked the voice down back into it's corner. It looked vaguely as though a variety of pictures of everyone I knew had been pinned to a wall and had various colored strings stretched between them. The only labeled 'ships' there so far were Nalu and Gruvia. But I had the feeling more would come.

While I was distracted, Lucy had also gotten me into something that was vaguely cute. It was a big step up from my usual shorts and ratty t-shirt. Though I had wanted to vehemently protest the school girl skirt, Lucy had treated me like her doll for the evening. I glared at my reflection, with its button up blouse and neatly combed hair briefly before sighing.

"Yeah, I'm coming." I made to get up and put my syllabary away...

" _If you can be disarmed, never go anywhere unarmed."_

" _An unprepared wizard doesn't live long."_ Mystogan and Freed had told me that. I glanced down at what I held.

Given how anxious I was feeling, I didn't want to leave this behind. And if I did and something happened, I would be kicking myself for years.

 _A way to take it with me without people noticing..._

"Actually...hang on a sec." _What was the incantation again...?_

The spell I wanted was an Undetectable Expansion Charm. Its use was heavily controlled, but I had two very good story based examples of its use and more mentioned in passing. Newt Scamander used it on his magic animal storage case, and Hermione had used it to smooth over the supply needs for the Golden Trio when they were on the run.

 _Unless I write out a stable rune pattern, it'll just fade over time but...I don't think I'll need it in the long term...A bag or something would be best, but I'm too young to pull off carrying a purse around..._ My shirt pocket would do.

" _Capacious extremis."_ Focusing hard on what I wanted, centering the space on the inside of my breast pocket, I fueled the spell. It took a little more than I expected for something I was only intending to be temporary. _Well, bigger on the inside effects are ridiculously broken._ Once the spell finished casting, I managed to slide my syllabary inside the pocket without it looking or feeling any different.

"Fae, come one we still gotta get Erza!"

"Keep your hair on Lucy, I'm coming."

-vVv-

Erza was dressed in a full on evening gown, with beautiful roses the same deep red as her hair on a dusky purple background, her hair swept up into a smooth knot on the back of her head and an alluring smile on her lips.

Right next to her was Lucy, with bright blonde hair, innocent, girlish eyes and a big bubbly smile providing and receiving contrast from Erza's mature confidence.

Small wonder the guys at their poker table were having trouble focusing on their cards.

Since I could read exactly how much cheating and dishonesty was going on, I didn't really want to play. I'd probably end up trying to find some way to win at everything anyway and I didn't want to do that.

I ended up sitting near a snack bar, feet swinging idly off of my stool as I watched my friends enjoy themselves.

"You look bored." The kindly bartender remarked.

"Kinda am." I admitted. "But it's nice to see so many people having fun."

Natsu was over by some random roulette game with Happy. He had wandered over there after staring in wide eyed surprise at Lucy for a full minute before Happy managed to snap him out of it.

 _ **It's the same color as Igneel's Scales, which is why it's his favorite.**_

 _Didn't I say to shut up?_

Gray was playing some version of magical slots somewhere, thought what the little figurines meant was beyond me. And a flash from _Gruvia_ told me that Juvia was nearby and about to make her move.

 _Yeah. Definitely good to see them having fun._

 _ **Something wicked this way comes.**_

 _Is this a subtle hint to lay off the Harry potter stuff and find something new?_ I asked sarcastically. _Cause once I find something else that's as versatile and useful that I can use without burning myself out or blowing anyone up on accident then I will!_

I found myself having this kind of argument with the voice in my head more and more often whenever it decided to be funny with a vague...slightly menacing comment. Thing was, it had yet to be wrong about something going down.

Ok, there was something dangerous was here, because of course there was. But what had made my magic warn me? I couldn't tell the future so the only way that would have happened was if there was no way of avoiding it.

 _My magic also told me that Loke would die, but he's still alive._ So, I was gonna run with the idea that while fate could very well exist, it was flexible and could be changed given enough sweat, blood, and tears. And fire. And punching. And swords... You get the idea!

I hopped down from my stool and went over to where Erza smugly pulled in yet another winning hand. _Is she sneaking cards out of her gloves?_

"I think it's my lucky day." She purred, tapping her cheek mischievously. I tugged on her arm.

"Erza, something's wrong." I whispered for her and Lucy's ears alone. "My magic says something bad's coming. We have to go!" The S-class wizard came out for a split second and gave me a sharp look. Lucy simply looked alarmed. I saw her hand automatically go to her keys, hidden down her dress front. A place only the truly shameless would look, let alone touch.

"Are you sure Fae?" Lucy asked, instantly keeping the same smile on her face in spite of what I was saying. I nodded, feeling a knot of fear and apprehension try to choke me.

"Yeah. I can't tell what it is, but it's here...Or it's going to be here soon." Erza's eyes scanned around for a split second, all sharp business.

"Lucy, take Fae. Protect her, tell the boys." Lucy rose, putting an arm around me.

"I'm sorry, I guess I have to turn in. Can't leave the little one alone." She said aloud with a smile with just the right amount of regret in it.

"C'mon beautiful, just one more game!" One player, a guy I noted, wheedled. Erza leaned forward and caught his attention.

"It's already past time for Faerun to be in bed. I'll take you on, gentlemen."

Lucy and I moved over to Gray and Juvia. It went without saying that subtly warning Natsu about an oncoming fight would be... counterproductive.

That was when I caught sight of a tall man with a literally square jaw made of metal. I heard something hiss through the air and-

"Fae!" Lucy knocked me down and aside as an orange colored rope flew towards us both. Her actions made it so it missed me but wrapped itself securely around her. Her legs were bent up towards her chest and her arms were bent back over her head. Lucy fell hard, unable to stay upright as she reflexively tried to squirm and her bonds only tightened.

"Lucy, stop! It'll only get tighter!" I rolled over to start working at the rope, which appeared to have cat features on the ends. A touch confirmed what I had observed. Living Coil Binding mixed with an Anti-action Binding. The two spells were simple ones. One gave it the ability to react to their captive and grapple them effectively. The Anti-action Binding kept captive from using any active magic such as an attack or defensive spell. The appearance and color was the result of a little personalization.

I grabbed one strand and pulled it away from Lucy, hissing an apology when it reacted to my messing with it as well.

" _Diffindo!"_ The magic in the bindings resisted my attempts to free Lucy, but I was able to make some headway. _One more time._

"Oops! I missed one!" I looked up to see a brown haired, cat eared girl readying to cast another spell. The same binding spell if I read the beginnings of the magic circle correctly.

I ducked down, avoiding the first onslaught of the spell. Being so close to Lucy, I didn't dare use another Severing Charm. The angle was too awkward and I could easily end up cutting her as well. But it was the magic on the rope, or tube rather, that was causing trouble.

The cobbled together spell came into my head and I prayed that it would work.

" _Totalus Locomotor Mortis Finite!"_ I hissed, trying to force the binding spell to end. If that was gone, it would be easy for Lucy to free herself.

"Nekosoku Tube!" I could tell even as the spell knocked me back a little ways that my intention had had some effect even if the spell was too unwieldy to eliminate the binding entirely. I went as limp as possible when the orange rope wound around me. I didn't fight it. My lack of resistance meant it simply wound me up like a caterpillar instead of bending me into a pretzel.

 _ **Natsu has been eliminated from the fight. Gray and Juvia are eliminated from the fight.**_ _Ok, apparently the magic blocking thing doesn't include passive effects._ But what about Erza? Erza would never give up!

There was a lot of confused shouting for a little while until there was only silence... I twisted my head slightly and saw that the floor was covered with cards...Cards with people on them that were moving.

 _ **Card Dimension. Can trap living beings safely inside a magical card. In spite of their helplessness, they can still interact with the outside world, if only in a limited sense.**_

"Hello, who brought a kid along?" The brown haired girl trotted over and looked down at me curiously. "And I saw you use magic too. I didn't think guilds were so heartless as to force kids to fight."

 _ **Millianna. She likes cats and is a friend of Erza's though she believes that Erza betrayed her.**_

"Erza wouldn't betray anyone!" I couldn't stay silent in the face of that. "Why in the world would you even think that!?" I dug fiercely for more, feeling my eyes glow slightly as my magic moved. This part was unhindered by the Nekosoku Tube.

"What the-! How can you still use magic!?" I took a moment to glare at her through my pale blue eyes. _Ok, seeing the world this blue is kinda weird._

"Read the instructions." I hissed at her, both furious at her misconception that Erza would betray anyone she considered a friend and at how uninformed she was about her own ability.

"Passive magical abilities need a more precise block than a stupid Anti-action Binding!" I broke through a wall that I associated with a secret.

 _Gotcha!_

I had read over time that Erza had once been a slave at the Tower of Heaven alongside several other children. I had read that there had been some trouble and she had escaped, but had been unable to bring any of her friends, or other slaves with her.

This girl, and the others, were part of those friends that Erza had been close to when she was a little girl. _**Millianna the Cat Girl. Wally, the Block Wizard, Sho the Card Mage, and Simon-**_

Simon didn't believe Erza had betrayed them!

"But- But you're just a little kid! How could you know that!"

"You were all slaves at the Tower of Heaven. Erza escaped, but she would never in a million years leave anyone she called a friend behind! The only way that would happen is if someone threatened to hurt you if she tried to help!" I yelled, doing my best not to thrash in anger.

"Shut up!" The binding around me moved up and wound around my mouth. I sullenly bit at the binding, glaring at the somewhat unnerved Millianna. Unnerved, heck she looked downright terrified.

Scared of what one little girl could see.

"Stop...stop looking at me!" The cat loving girl cried, stumbling back. "Simon make her stop!" She whined like a frightened child. The tall man, _**(the man who believes, who knows Erza loves them still)**_ _,_ came over and picked me up. With one hand.

 _Show off._ I glared at him, still steaming inside.

" _How can you see that?"_ I heard an unfamiliar man's voice inside my head. _**It's telepathy.**_

 _Well, duh._

"Put her down!" Erza's scream came across the mostly empty hall as a sword flashed into her hands and her eyes blazed with never before seen fury. "Let her go, now!"

"Ain't that interesting." Drawled another man's voice as he materialized beside me. Something metallic pressed against my head. "Alright, Erza. Promise we ain't gonna hurt the brat, just come with us nice and easy and she don't get hurt, see?" A man who looked as though he was made of super large pixelated blocks was pointing a gun-arm at my head.

 _ **Wally won't shoot.**_ I shook my head at Erza, trying to convey this thought to her. I was wishing desperately for telepathy of my own so I could tell her that she didn't have to give herself over. I winced as the binding tightened even in response to my tiny movement.

Her hand tightened on her sword, then loosened as she dropped it.

"I...I'm sorry Fae..."

I had never seen Titania look so helpless as she did right then.


	12. Prisoners

The boat was kinda small and cramped with six of us in it. At least Happy was small enough to be carried by an ecstatic Millianna. _Wouldn't be nearly that easy to keep a hold of him if he were awake._ The big guy, Simon, was carrying me and keeping me out of arm's reach of Erza.

" _What all have you seen?"_ Simon asked me once we were well underway. They had smashed all the other boats they could get their hands on before even coming into the casino after us.

The memories, the story, his story, crashed through my head.

First, months of torment at the hands of their slavemasters. The small consolation the children had found in each other and the elderly man, Rob, who looked after them. Then, the revolt. Erza came back from a 'disciplinary session' sans an eye, Jellal was taken and changed.

Jellal claimed that Erza, who had awakened her magic, had destroyed the boats the other slaves planned to use to escape and trapped them all in their miserable hell. As far as Simon knew, everyone believed him, even those who still called Erza their friend.

But Simon didn't. Simon knew Erza would never do anything like that.

" _Soooo...how long have you had this thing for Erza?"_ I had gotten used to speaking along his telepathic channel and not just broadcasting my thoughts to any listening telepath. But saying this to Simon resulted in what I could only describe as a mental blush.

 _ **Simza...~!**_

 _For crying out loud, now is not the time!_ I focused on sorting through the information I had gotten simply by touching the man before I gave an actual date.

" _Now that I've been in contact with you for this long, I've seen all the way back to when you were first captured."_ And only an incredible amount of self delusion was keeping me from breaking down into a jibbering, terrified mess. That and I was pretty sure the big guy was helping somehow.

" _And you think the same thing?"_

" _Of course! And I've seen the story from Erza's side too! Not all of it, sure. I don't like reading into the details of people's pasts unless I absolutely have to. But I did see plain as day that she still feels guilty over having to leave you behind. And scared."_ Looking at Erza now, it looked as though she was caught up in a traumatic flashback. Her face was pale and her eyes haunted and distant. A nightmare of epic proportions was rocking her.

 _Erza..._

Erza was one of the strongest people I knew. Her sense of right and wrong was unparalleled in its strength, though at times her whims did get the better of her. She was an avid believer of order and discipline and any woe betide any wrong doers that crossed her path.

Seeing Erza this broken and afraid was wrong. She was supposed to be strong, not just powerful, but strong enough to be kind, to not hide her heart behind a suit of armor in spite of what she tried to make everyone believe.

And now she was relieving her time in hell.

" _Some one has been keeping the R-system's existence hidden from the Magic Council, otherwise they surely would have found us."_ Simon began. " _I do not know how Jellal has done it, but-"_ I froze as his face flashed through my head and the connection was made.

There was a new, young wizard on the Magic Council, the youngest one ever if I recalled. He was in Lucy's magazine, the one where the most eligible bachelors of Fiore were listed.

 _ **Siegrain. The mysterious recent addition to the Magic Council. Often found in the company of Ultear Milkovich, another record breakingly young council member.**_

His face was the exact same as the image I had gotten from Simon as to what Jellal looked like.

Were they brothers? I'd need to touch Jellal to be sure, to read his story from his side and see what was really going on.

" _What's the matter?"_

" _Uh...I don't know how in touch you've been with the outside world..."_

" _Not much."_

" _Then I know who's hiding this place. Or at least a very likely likely candidate..."_

I spent the rest of the trip with Simon, trading information, or stories. The closer we got to the tower, the more my Retrocognition groaned and sent me memories of torture, death and slavery. It was...not easy to deal with.

" _I believe I said to bring Erza and Erza alone."_ The voice was another man's and it sent shivers down my spine. The other's in the boat heard it too judging by their reactions. (Only Erza didn't react though. I guess she hadn't heard it?)

That was Mystogan's voice! Or at least it sounded exactly like him. But Mystogan had never sounded that...harsh, jaded, cynical or cruel.

The fear that Simon had been trying to stave off by talking to me all throughout our trip started to creep in on my mind... Simon's hand tightened marginally.

"Lay off, Jellal. It was take the kid or face a pitched battle." Wally complained. But I could read he wasn't nearly as laid back as he was acting, there was fear in him underneath that false trust. He was fooling himself into trusting Jellal. They all were. They all were convincing themselves, everyday, every step they took, that they believed he was doing the right thing. "Besides, she has magic. Might be useful."

" _Really?"_ He sounded intrigued and not in a good way. " _Bring her up to me."_ We were within sight of the tower, a spiky, tortured looking spindle that stabbed up out of the ocean.

 _Hate. Pain. Death. Obsession. Pain. Resentment. Painpainpain!_

I wanted to clutch my head reflexively as the poisonous feelings rang through my head. I wanted to turn off my magic, do something, anything if it meant that the noise would stop. It was like nails, literal steel nails, scratching over slate, skin, eyes. It was as though every sense I possessed was under attack from this phantom agony.

Years of heartache and suffering were crammed into this tower. It had been built on lies and torture, its history was one of blood and death. Such potent, rampant, pure human evil that I wanted to be sick.

The tears came up without my being able to stop them. My body's automatic response to stress and pain to try and alleviate it in some way. But it wouldn't help. It couldn't. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to wake up back in the Fairy Hill dorms and find the closest wizard I could to make the darkness go away!

-vVv-

Simon wanted to comfort the girl, but knew that would give his intentions away. With Jellal having noticed them and expressed interest in her, his attention would be on them. Since Jellal had been the one to teach Simon his telepathy spell, he couldn't risk trying to speak to her again without being discovered. Jellal had to be distracted with something else before he dared try that.

It wasn't as though he could offer much solace since it was his fault that the child had ended up here in the first place. He had come over to see what was distressing Millianna, and instead of seeing a grown wizard who had been fighting just a girl who hadn't been doing anything but speaking. Though he could admit he saw how the catgirl might think the ethereal glow of pale blue eyes was unnerving. Erza had seen her in his grasp and her brown eyes had hardened to daggers of rage as she demanded that he release Fae. The painful history that tied them all together had vanished in the face of the present need of seeing her safe. The helpless rage, the frustration and despair that he had seen in Erza as she surrendered herself for the girl's sake...

 _You really care about her. Just like you did all of us._ She didn't even look to be ten years old.

He noticed that the closer they got, the more tears leaked out of Fae's eyes and the more terrified she looked. The expression was one that hit home on all of them. Wally and Sho were looking straight ahead, pretending to be stone faced while Millianna looked ever so guilty.

 _We've existed in this demon pit for almost ten years. It's a fate we all know, deep down, that no one should endure. And we're bringing a child here. We may as well as be our own captors._ He could recall his own fright when he was brought here in the dead of night with a boatload of other children. Erza had been among them. Those emotions were being mirrored perfectly on Fae's face and in her silent tears. And it was not an easy reminder for any of them. Wally, Sho and Millianna had thrown themselves into this project, using Erza's betrayal as a shield against their continued pain.

A shield that was useless before the sucker punch that was Fae's tears.

If her magic was as she said and she read or felt the past, then she was being forced to experience every terrible thing that had happened here over the years.

Millianna hadn't wanted to take off her binding spell, not even to replace them with cords. And she had insisted on a gag despite how Erza had growled at them. (Literally growled. Hopefully the attitude would remain for when the time came to fight.) Since she had magic and was an unknown factor, freeing her could very well end up in disaster. It had been Wally who spoke for her.

" _She's a kid, Mil."_ What he didn't say was this: _And she's as terrified as we were._

Simon knew Fae had to be exhausted. They had sailed through the night in order to get back here from the shore. And while she had drifted in and out of consciousness, he knew that fear always made sleep little more than a chance for dreams to torture her.

He carried her when the boat touched on shore. He felt Jellal's attention turn towards Erza and then he risked it.

" _Sleep while you can, kid. You know your friends better than I do, but I know they'll be here to save you soon."_

-vVv-

I woke up in a room that didn't look that out of the ordinary. It was comfortably furnished and by all appearances looked like any hotel room. Green and tan color scheme and simple decorations. A little bland, generic and boring, but nothing shabby or painful.

I sat up in the bed I was in and looked around, somewhat confused.

 _Ok..definitely remember being held hostage, and taken to the Tower. Erza was here too-_

 _ERZA!_

I scrambled out of the bed and raced to the door.

Almost predictably, it was locked.

" _Hello, young Faerun."_ Jellal's voice sounded inside my head. " _Ward of Fairy Tail and budding Rune Wizard. I bid you welcome to my tower."_

I considered for a moment what the best course of action would be in response to this.

1: Reply bravely. Pro: feel brave for a little bit. Con: amuse the bad guy.

2: Demand answers. Pro: potentially get some. Con: amuse the bad guy.

3: Gibber and cry. Pro: vent some stress. Con: amuse the bad guy.

 _Let's go with door #4 and ignore him altogether._

Ok, thinking things through.

First. I was trapped in a tower that was filled with guards and surveillance with a traitorous member of the Magic Council on the top floor.

Second: I was not alone, or wouldn't be for long anyway. If I could get to Erza, or the others when they inevitably made their entrance, I would have someone to protect me and cover up the fact that I couldn't fight effectively yet. If I had one of them with me, I'd be more confident about taking someone on. As it was, avoidance would be my best bet.

Third: Materials. It looked like I had anything I'd find in a typical hotel room. And even then, I had to do some evaluation to see what resources I had available.

I was still a little weak and tired, but I wasn't going to stay in the enemy's power for longer than I had to.

I had to get out of this room before I could do anything. I looked around, eyes narrowed. Jellal had known when I got up and started moving around...

" _Scanning for bugs or hidden vision lacrima..."_ There were five in this room alone. I moved about and managed to get my fingers to brush them to learn what they were for. Three cameras, two microphones.

 _Ok...let's see...Does it matter if Jellal sees what I am doing?_ I should at least make some effort to conceal my efforts to escape.

The Harry Potter spells had served me well, but that seemed a little too...basic for this operation. That and their purpose could, to some extent, be extrapolated with a bit of knowledge of Latin and a few other languages.

I needed another system of practicing magic...

I settled onto the floor and began to dig through the caverns of my mind for a solution.

Given how much was in there, I found a reasonable solution which should give me the same amount of versatility as my Latin-based spells.

I clambered around the room until I could easily reach one of the audio lacrima.

I cupped my hands around it and focused, calling on my magic to tap into the story and give me that power...

" _Hóna neo."_ Simply translated: 'Hear not' in the Ancient Language of Alagaesia.

I felt the power leave me and heard a faint buzzing sound. I touched it to verify that the spell had worked and was satisfied. I had about three hours until that lacrima was functional again.

I repeated the process with the other audio lacrima and when the time came to block the vision lacrima, I altered what I was saying to 'Ven neo', which meant 'see not' in the same language.

Once I had some privacy, I set to work on my crystal slate to try and work out how much I was up against. The rune syllabary hadn't been taken out of my magically expanded pocket and had, I hope, gone unnoticed. That was the point of an undetectable extension charm after all. That the bad guys don't spot that you have it!

There were many levels in this place. I was towards the top. Floor 37 of 49. The lower levels were crawling with guards and various trained monsters, grimjaws and grimwings primarily. But that also had an exit to the open sea. So that was where the rescue party would most likely enter. Meditating and focusing on where Erza was let me know she was in a cell also towards the bottom.

Either way, it meant I'd have to sneak past a lot of guards or fight them. I'd best be prepared for both cases.

 _Ok. Something versatile and capable of both stealth and melee...but it has to be suited to my size and skillset. If I try and use something that's beyond my abilities, I could end up crippling myself..._

I inspected the food that was laid out, some fruit, a bowl full of nuts, some rolls and water, and munched on an apple as I tried to think of some way, any way, of making this work...

 _Child hero._

 _Link!_ I grinned.

Link was the perfect source for this! As a child and an adult, he had often needed to sneak past sentries or guards when he wasn't capable of fighting them. And when he had to fight, he could very well fight! He had centuries of inherited memories and experience just waiting in the wings!

I hurriedly tapped through my entire runic vocabulary to put together the enchantment before putting it into 'simulation'.

Simulation was the best word to describe the completely bland factual break down of my spells as given to me by the helpful voice in my head. It could tell me what the odds were of it working and, sometimes even, if something was wrong or missing to my set up.

I gnawed on my lip as I looked through everything I had. Trying to frame such a huge story into an enchantment as short as this wasn't going to be easy. There was so much more to Link's abilities that the words never even touched on. I'd need to have the full meaning and context of each word I used in mind...

' _Child Link.'_ Was the linchpin of the operation. 'Child' implied youth, inexperience and constant learning and growing. It was a moderator to allow the enchantment to rest more securely in my frame since I was a child myself. The other half of that was the emphasis on the young age point and capitalizing on the fact that there were many adults who simply didn't notice kids and reflexively dismissed what they were doing as unimportant. I doubted most of the guards had the necessary parental instincts to make this something they would be instantly aware of. (For example, pretty much no one except Master and Macao would readily notice me when I used the word in this sense. Considering how different the two were in power and skillset, I thought it must be the fatherhood thing that made the difference.)

With the name Link, there was attached the instinctive knowledge of sword and shield use, which would be bolstered by my own experience with Erza, a few specific attacks and his unbelievable stamina for a child his age. The various weapons that characterized the series were hard to produce out of thin air, so I had to stick to the basics.

Everything looked airtight. I ran it through the sim and scowled deeply when it came back negative.

The same problem that hadn't let me free Lucy completely back at the casino was prevalent here. The enchantment, despite only being two words long altogether, had too much weighing on it to be usable. It was too complex a concept for me to just speak aloud and have it work. I needed something more permanent.

The only writing utensil I could find was a pencil and that wouldn't help, since I had nothing to write on. There was a knife set on the table with the food. Was I desperate enough to try carving the enchantment into my arm? While it would certainly give the whole thing a big power boost, it would also land me in a huge heap of trouble once the others found out. That and it was a little to permanent for me to want to etch that into my arm. Actually, since 'child' was a primary part of the enchantment, it might end up stunting my growth.

 _Yeah, find another way._

I didn't get frustrated, yet, I just looked around the room slowly and carefully.

 _Something permanent, something to keep it fresh in my head. Longer than words. Something tangible to attach it to..._

If the issue were condensing it down, then I had already gone through that. The problem would be maintaining my focus on all the details that I wanted to enchant myself with. Not to mention the fact that I would need actual weapons to make the most of my work here. At the very least a sword, which would have to be included in the enchantment so I could wield it properly and preferably a shield of some kind as well...

My eyes fell on the green tablecloth.

I had a sudden burst of inspiration.

The iconic factor of Link in all his incarnations was that he, at some point, would or at least could wear a tunic and a long pointed cap in some shade of green.

I bounced up and set to work, moving the food aside and yanking the cloth off the table.

It was a small table, and since I was pressed for time, I couldn't do much but...

" _Diffindo..."_ I started cutting the cloth into a roughly triangular shape...

With a few other muttered spells, I got thread and started to sew my creation together.

It was a crude object I ended up with. But it would fit well, and was the right color...

I focused on the parody of a green hat that I held.

 _Link. Hero in all his lifetimes. Born bearing the Triforce of Courage and the one fated to at least once in his lifetime fight Ganon, the shard of Demise who swore enmity between himself and Link's descendants. He is always a Hylian. He is always some shade of blonde. He uses a sword and shield and myriads of other tools in his travels to protect the Goddesses' chosen land._

 _He is not perfect and will sometimes fail, but he always gets back up and keeps trying._

This story was one that was ongoing. The battle against evil never ended, it only changed. Right vs Wrong, Peace vs War, Freedom vs Tyranny. No matter the odds, keep fighting.

That was what I felt about this story. That was the kind of bravery I needed right now.

 _Help me._

" _Child. Link."_ I whispered, enunciating it clearly and carefully, packing all of the meanings I attached to this story into those two words and in turn, putting that two word story into the hat I held.

The hat changed as I watched.

It... _shifted_ from a crude, hastily made accessory to a symbol. The seams smoothed from my clumsy stitching into something that looked much better. The raw cloth gained a weathered look and thickened slightly. Looking inside revealed that it was now lined, which I hadn't had the time or knowledge of how to do.

I turned the...magical tool, hopefully, over in my hands, inspecting it with every sense I possessed. I was going to be trusting my life to this thing after all.

 _ **One hour until the blocks on the observation lacrima run out.**_

I sighed, deeming that while it certainly wasn't perfect, it was easily the most stable enchantment I had ever made. And it hadn't taken as much power as I had though either...

 _ **Stories gain power as people hear them.**_

And... I had been telling people stories of Hyrule and the Legend of Zelda... Sure, I hadn't even gotten through the contents of Skyward Sword, but they already knew about Link.

 _Note to self, find a way to use Lord of the Rings stuff._ Since the book was published all over the Fiore, there were be thousands of people who read it!

I slipped the cap onto my head, adjusting it slightly. I jerked my head around a bit to see how attached it was. I even stood on my hands. It remained firmly where it was.

 _Oh...of course, when do you ever see Link lose his hat?_

I was grinning privately as I flipped back to my feet and looked around with new purpose and energy. I had a theme, now I had to see how far I could roll with it!

There was a knife with the food. _The hat changed..._

A sword was, after all, another part of Link's standard outfit. Few and far between were the moments when he didn't have one when he was on the clock. I picked up the paring knife and with a little focus on the hat I wore...

There was no offer way of describing what I was doing other than saying, I imagined it.

The knife lengthened and gained a second edge. I held a perfectly sized sized short sword in my hands with a functional brown leather hilt and crossguard decorated with a small red jewel. I tested the edge on the table and made a good sized nick. I checked my back and found that a sheath had appeared as well. On my back, angled over my left shoulder, going with my dominant hand.

 _Well, in the games you do always automatically have a sheath of the right size on hand whenever you get a new sword. Makes no sense, but I ain't gonna argue._

I put the sword away before drawing it and slashing experimentally a few times to get used to the motion. Running through a few more moves, I was pleased to note that the sword was balanced and felt good in my hand. And I noted that the moves were much smoother than I would normally be able to make them. As I had hoped, the enchantment's proficiency was making up for where I lacked.

 _Ok. The spell works. I have a weapon and some extra help in using it. I still need some form of defense and distraction._

Since my trick with the sword had worked, I decided to get a little more daring. I dismantled the chair in the room, which was thankfully wooden. Once I had the seat by itself, I used the Cutting Charm and etched the Kokiri symbol into it while focusing on on the Deku Shield.

It glowed briefly before reforming itself into the simple device. I rapped on it with my knuckles, thinking.

It would have to do for my escape. I'd have to avoid fire coming in contact with it, and to not tempt fate, I'd probably better not try to take any huge blows with this thing. But it would certainly be a help. And it made me feel more in character, which couldn't be a bad thing considering how this spell was being powered.

 _Yes, I am making cosplay magic._

There were already straps on the back of the shield. Donning it felt easy and natural, as did stowing it on my back over the sheathed knife turned sword.

 _This is...looking pretty good._ Considering I'd started with nothing, this was a huge improvement. But I was still one kid a long way away from help. I needed more and felt reasonably sure the hat's enchantment could stand up to another outlet...But what could I use that still fit the character?

Besides a sword and shield, Child Link's arsenal included a slingshot, bombs and a boomerang...

 _I don't have time to BS making those. Something fast and easy..._

I chewed thoughtfully on a roll to try and regain some of the magic I had used up in arming myself for my escape.

Most of the unique tools were out of reach. Sure, I had the wood from my destroying the chair to make a slingshot, but that had only been good for killing little monsters such as skulltula and stunning bigger ones. The boomerang was simple in design, but I'd need to sacrifice some concentration to keep it coming back to me the way it was supposed to. And a lapse in focus could cost me too much here

No, best to use the slingshot. It was much more simple.

 _I have wood to make the frame. I'm don't have anything elastic. I could...potentially make that._ But having another weapon that was so reliant on magic just to hold it together, let alone to use it... _I_ _have ammo, since there's walnuts with the food._

Nuts. There were nuts that were an early part of Child Link's arsenal.

 _Deku Nuts! Geeze, forget the slingshot!_

Those delightful, useful little explosives that literally grew on trees! I love Hyrule! Land of the man eating plants, talking, floating balls of light and bottomless chasms of death that somehow teleport you back to the entrance of a given room!

I ran my hands through the bowl of nuts, scanning to see which ones I could feasibly use. They may have been intended as something extremely temporary, but I was still going to be asking a lot of the spell.

 _16 altogether. That'll be enough. I hope..._

To my surprise, turning the mixed nuts into Deku nuts wasn't hard. The fact that I was changing their inherent nature from edibles into, essentially, flashbang grenades didn't seem to be taking as much power as the knife into a sword or the chair's seat into a shield.

 _ **The closer the base to the desired outcome, the easier the transformation.**_ That made sense. And I certainly wasn't complaining.

I dumped the Deku nuts into my still active expanded shirt pocket. I didn't want my syllabary anywhere near explosives, so I jury rigged a holster for it outside and put together a rough satchel from the remaining cloth to stuff some food into. I didn't know how long I'd be in this tower and better safe than sorry.

The pitcher of water I'd have to leave behind. So I just drained the whole thing.

I just touched the doorknob with the intent to go outside when I was reminded potently or where I was.

In a tower that was built on forced slave labor with a dark shadow covering the whole thing.

 _Ok, adding another thing to the list._

Fourth: on top of all this, I had the psychic equivalent of a live torture session going on replay inside my head. So all my preparation meant nothing if I couldn't even bear to step outside this room.

 _ **Five minutes remaining until Jellal has visual back.**_

 _Ok. First priority is to get something up about that so I can function enough to handle the rest._

There were any number of ways of blocking a mental attack. But the method from the Inheritance Cycle had the most detailed description of what was going on. You picked a concept, a word, a phrase, a line of poetry, and you let it fill your mind until it made a shield that protected against external forces pressing in on one's mind. Anyone who tried to read your thoughts or force in new ones would find only the single idea you were focused on.

I closed my eyes, fishing for something that would feel...thematically appropriate. Bastardizing from two poems from the series had the best feel to it.

 _In the land of Durza/_

 _There lived a man with yellow eyes/_

 _He said, 'beware the shadows/_

 _For the shadows whisper lies.'_

I ended up needing to use my syllabary to get it cycling on repeat in my head. The orange band of script wound around my wrist and this time when I touched the door, I only felt a slightly pressure from the dark force in the air.

 _Here goes nothing..._

" _Alohomora."_

-vVv-

 _Oh, that's interesting..._ Jellal thought, brows raising when he lost visual and audio in the room where he had placed the wizardling in to see what she would do and how she would handle herself. She couldn't leave without him noticing, so he settled back to wait until whatever she did wore off. She hadn't destroyed the lacrima, merely blinded and deafened them for a short time. The fact that she had managed to pull that off at her age was...mildly impressive.

He was considerably more impressed when it took three hours for the spell to wear off. She hadn't left that entire time, so he supposed she had been preparing herself while he had been blinded.

 _Celeste D Faerun._ Jellal had noticed her when she became a ward of Fairy Tail, and had dismissed her then. She was too young to be of any consequence. When she was seen in Erza's company, specifically, when Erza started training her, he began to pay a little more attention. He had seen and heard her spin her tales of islands in the sky and a vast, untamed world below. It was a unique approach to a basic illusionary skillset, using words to weave pictures and stories. He couldn't see what she got out of it beyond a boosted reputation for the guild that was taking care of her.

When the lacrima winked back on and showing him the room he had placed her in, he was surprised to say the least.

The teal haired girl had butchered the table cloth and the chair while he had been blinded. And she wore a green cap he knew she hadn't had on her before.

 _That looks remarkably like the hat her main character wears..._

And she had somehow gotten a sword and shield? Where had she been hiding them?

It was the ruined chair that caught his attention. The seat was missing. He couldn't see it anywhere in the room.

Jellal remained alert and intrigued as Faerun opened the door with a murmured word that made no sense, but served to unlock it.

 _I've never seen or heard of anything like this..._

This was fascinating. A private game outside of the one he was playing with the older Fairy Tail wizards. He had been completely unaware of the true extent of the girl's abilities. He doubted she'd be able to do much by herself, but she had surprised him by not crying. Given the state she had been in when she was brought here, he could guess that she had some sort of empathy that made the tower painful for her to be near. But she had either gotten over it, or was blocking it out somehow. The band of orange script around her wrist wasn't readable at this distance, but that probably had something to do with it.

The Dragon Slayer and his companions would arrive in about an hour. Jellal had time to see why Faerun had decided to dress like Link of Hyrule before breaking out of her room. If she were any other child, he would have said it was an immature whim. A girlish fantasy of playing at hero. But with her, given the unknown magical abilities she had shown, he suspected there was something more to it, something he hadn't seen yet...

He sent someone down to inspect the room and bring back news of what was missing.

Most of the food, the knife and the seat of the chair as well as the table cloth were gone. How did she get a sword from that?

She managed to hide from the first three patrols of guards. When they did find her, about half an hour after she broke out of her room without raising the alarm, Jellal sat up.

The second board he had set up with a book and pen figurine as Faerun and plain pawn pieces for the guards took his whole attention.

Faerun reached into her breast pocket and threw something onto the ground that burst open with a flash and and a roar. Jellal blinked afterimages from his eyes even as he heard the pained cries of his guards. When he could see again, he saw that she had drawn her sword and disabled most of the men around her by cutting their legs out from under them. The two that she hadn't gotten to yet were outraged and drew their out staves to try and throw a disciplinary spell at her. He had instructed them to not hurt her, merely subdue her.

Faerun showed no fear. She batted the oncoming attack aside with her shield, two fast slashes cutting both the thigh and dominant arm of the man attacking her. Then she rolled out of the way of the second strike, back and around the remaining man, leaping up a surprising distance to slash down his back. Just enough to hamper and cripple, but not enough to kill.

With her five opponents downed, Faerun turned and fled into the darkened corridors, steadily heading downward.

Jellal laughed.

Five of his guards against one little girl. And it was the girl who was still standing and running.

He still had little idea of how, but she had made a fully functional sword and shield of what was in the room with her Rune magic as well as turned a handful of nuts into stun grenades!

 _No wonder Brain wanted her..._

-vVv-

Normally, I wouldn't have stopped in my retreat for anything, but a few floors down from the "hotel room", my magic flashed some information into my mind.

 _ **Millianna's room is on this floor.**_ And that was where Happy would be kept if he was brought only simply to appease her.

I paused for a split second, searching for the cat loving wizard herself but I wasn't familiar enough with her to get a firm lock on her location. But I couldn't call myself a member of Fairy Tail if I left my friend behind if I knew where they were.

Since I had already beaten the guards on this floor, and placed a Silencing Charm on them to keep them from calling for help, I had plenty of time. Plus, if I could get to an open window, Happy could just fly us down to the entrance!

I inspected the locked door with cat's painted on it. I knocked tentatively.

"Happy? Happy are you in there?" I heard a crash inside.

"Fae?! Fae, you're OK! Get me outta here! I'll go nuts if I have to stay in here much longer!"

"Working on it!" I pressed my hand to the door and listened attentively.

 _ **Basic Privacy spell serving as a lock.**_ Alohomora wouldn't work then. I'd need something with a little more umph.

I licked the tip of my finger and traced a circle around the lock, focusing on it intently...

"Happy? Get under cover! I'm gonna have to blast the door open!" I put up a _Muffliato_ spell to cover the noise as I said this. No need to advertise where I was even though using these charms all on top of one another would probably bite me hard later.

"Uh-oh..." I rolled my eyes as I heard him scramble away. "Go ahead!"

I stepped back and pointed at the circle I had put around the lock.

 _Keep all of it...right there..._ I inhaled and clapped my hands, releasing the energy I'd gathered.

" _Bombarda!"_ The lock shattered in a puff of dark smoke and a bang. I pushed the door open and peered inside, waving a hand to clear the smoke.

"Happy?" A fuzzy blue cat tackled me.

"Faaaaeee! I was so scared and this room is creeping me out!" I saw where he was coming from. The room within was little more than a shrine to all things cute and cat, taken up to eleven.

"It'll be OK. The others're gonna be here soon, and you know nothing can keep Erza down for long! We're gonna be OK!"

"Aye, sir!"

Finding and freeing Happy had been a stroke of good luck. For all that he was a small cat, he was capable of delivering a surprising clout with whatever he had on hand. (Or would 'on paw' be the correct word to use?) Once I thought about it for a bit, it was actually made sense, though. Happy was capable of lifting and flying Natsu around with ease even in the middle of combat which meant he had a fair amount of strength. He was terrifying little monster all told.

I ended up giving him half of my Deku nuts and leaving it to him to distract the guards that we couldn't avoid. We made it down several more floors through a combination of stealth and fighting, disabling the guards I couldn't avoid. All in all, not too bad for an hour's work.

 _Where am I again?_

My magic responded to my perusal of the towers history and my own in relation to it.

 _ **Floor 28.**_

For all that the tower was tall, each floor wasn't that big and I had managed to find stairs easily enough.

"How much further till we reach the bottom?" Happy asked in a whisper as we waited for the latest patrol who had spotted us to race on by on a wild goose chase.

"Almost thirty floors, but I think we have to head into the basement." I whispered, cleaning the blood from my sword with a gesture.

I was getting tired though. From the activity and, more seriously, from the magic drain. For just sneaking around, the hat barely used any magic. But when I fought and had to use made up skills, it drained far more energy. Happy and I had fought or evaded four patrols in total.

 _This isn't looking good. Equipment wise, I'm OK. Just a couple dents on the shield and nothing I can see on the sword. But I'm gonna run out of magic if I have to keep fighting these guys._

Erza's lessons could only go so far and since swords was not my primary choice of weapon, (Note that I didn't actually own one.) I was relying more and more on my spell and that was draining me faster.

I heard something explode with a roar several floors down.

 _ **Natsu has arrived.**_ The bland voice reported in the closest thing I had ever heard to a deliberate deadpan.

 _And where's Erza?_

 _ **She has escaped and will soon find the others.**_

They were all together then. So all we had to do was make it to them!

"Hey Happy, Natsu's here. What say we go and greet them?"

"Aye!"

-vVv-

Gray was mad, furious that they had lost three of their friends to the sneak attack.

The men they had been attacked by had taken Happy, Ezra, and Fae. Happy was Natsu's partner, his funny sidekick and Grey's friend. Erza was his guildmate, friend and occasional minder. And Fae? Her position was lingering somewhere between friend leaning towards little sister. But all were important to him and what's more Gray knew Natsu's protective instincts would be firing non-stop on all cylinders until he was sure that all of them were safe. And that meant his aggression and power levels would be soaring beyond their normal limits, much to the woe of their enemies.

"Where're Erza, Fae and Happy!" The fire eater roared as he swept a large group of guards off of the cat walks to the water below where Juvia made short work of them. Gray assisted him by icing the floor of the walkways over so they had no chance of stopping their momentum once they started moving.

Grey had his own priorities when it came to this rescue.

Erza could take care of herself, and so could Happy, he had been hanging around Natsu for long enough to get pretty good at fending for himself. It was Fae that Gray was most concerned about. She was a kid, the only combat experience she had was her field trip with Mystogan during the war with Phantom Lord. When she'd had had someone to keep an eye on her and make her she didn't hurt herself.

Here, she was alone, frightened and outnumbered. A young wizard could easily push themselves too far. They didn't have the experience to realize where their limits were until they surpassed them.

Finally, they got clear of the guards in the lower level.

"Is that all of them?" Lucy asked, standing ready with her hand still at her keys. Gray reflexively averted his eyes from the curvy blonde. She was his friend, it was wrong and weird to think of her as hot. (Even though it was far safer to think of her that way than Erza.)

"Looks like it. Natsu, you got anything?" The dragon slayer leaned back and sniffed the air.

"All of them were in here a while ago..." There came a soft rumble and a set of stairs extended down.

"What the-?"

"Looks like someone's inviting us in." Gray narrowed his eyes as he regarded the steps.

 _Ok. Either whoever is in charge of this place is stupid, or confident that we won't be able to mess up his plans too much._ While having a stupid enemy would be nice, they usually weren't that lucky.

 _Whoever's here is not gonna go down easy. He's got Fae, Erza and Happy to use against us if we get too rowdy. We need to find them soon before someone else does so we can tear this place apart._

Erza would almost certainly have broken out of wherever they tried to stick her by now. And Gray was willing to bet that Fae had done the same, despite her inexperience. She didn't let problems stop her for long. And Happy was as slippery as the fish he regularly devoured.

"Well, that's where the scent is going, so let's move out!" Natsu stomped off towards the stairs, heat still rolling off of him in waves. Gray followed, trying to ignore Juvia. For all that she had been an enormous help in getting in, she was kinda creeping him out the more she went on about how they were destined to be together.

"Right. Virgo, are you good to stay out for a while longer?"

"Yes, Princess."

Gray hung back to make sure Lucy and her spirit were between him and Natsu. She was a good friend and a decent fighter, but she was still the least experienced member of their group. He didn't want to see any more of his friends get hurt.

 _Just hang on, Fae. We're coming..._

Gray wanted to see this dark, creepy tower torn down. He didn't like the vibe he was getting. And he wanted to see whoever had kidnapped his friends pay for hurting them.

 _Just be patient._ He reminded himself. _Don't rush into things. We can't afford to lose another team member._

-vVv-

I had managed to hide from other patrols. They weren't worrying about one escaped little girl and a talking blue cat. Not with four full-grown and far more dangerous wizards making their way up from the basement. And being pretty noisy about it too.

This part of the tower was different from the upper stories. It was hollow, with a massive ramp on the outside wall that steadily spiraled downward.

 _ **In order to haul bulky materials upwards for further construction, the large main path was built up from the bottom. It goes to about the 40th floor before it enters the basement levels and quarries.**_

On the one hand: it was way easier to just run without needing to hunt down the stairs. On the other: Less cover for when people did spot me. Happy had recommended that we simply fly down. I had had a vision of being shot out of the air in response. We stuck to trudging it out on foot and kept our heads down as much as we could.

The extra space helped a lot as I ducked, dodged and rolled around both magic and staves while Happy went after their heads with a club I had made for him. I sliced at hamstrings and tendons, the sharp magical edge of the sword passing through their thinner armor with ease. I'd never be able to hack through their helms or breastplates and this was easier for me to reach anyway.

"Fae, look out!"

I threw up my shield at Happy's cry and blocked a swipe coming at me from above. The recoil jarred painfully up my arm and the force of the blow caused the shield clip my head, making it ring like a bell. My backhanded counter, moving on instinct and guided by the spell, laid a good sized gash into my opponent's thigh. I fished a Deku nut out of my pocket, whistling to warn Happy as I threw it down and ran clear of the encircling ring of guards. Happy soared over and grabbed me to hurry on down the next few floors.

 _My head..._ I was feeling stars swim before my eyes. I glanced at my slate. The enhancement was still functional, but my head trauma had made it unstable, since I couldn't concentrate properly. I heard Happy speaking past the roast of my own pulse

"-e! Fae, you gotta snap out of it, they're gonna catch up! We gotta finish them!" Happy swerved as a bolt of magic hit overhead.

"Get them!" I heard them howl behind us even as we bolted for the next level. There was still a bit of construction material scattered around here and there that I might have made use of had I not been so tired...Thinking was kinda hard right now. _Don't suppose if I break a pot I'll find a heart inside or something._ I force the nonsensical thought out of my head and drew on a little more magic to let me think again.

I pulled one of my remaining Deku nuts from my pocket and threw it behind us. There were only three guards still chasing us. While they were blinded, Happy ducked down and despised me behind a stack of stones.

 _Come on!_ I brought my sword up and to bear, ready to pounce when they came within reach. _Roll and slash as they come. End up on the other side of the group._ Happy grabbed a 2-by-4 as a weapon and waited, hovering and at the ready.

Then a blur ran by me with a gleam of polished metal and a flash of red hair.

"Erza!"

The woman was in her standard armor and carried two blades. Her face was utterly terrifying as she flew past myself and my current partner and dispatched our pursuers in a flash. As soon as that was down, she dropped her swords and seized me in a tight hug.

"Fae! Thank goodness you're alright..." The strain and stress was going right to my tear ducts. I hate _being a kid sometimes._ "You're not hurt or anything? They didn't do anything?" I shook my head, still clinging to her, relief choking off any words I could speak.

"Happy! That's a relief, you're safe too. Now that I've found you, we need to leave!"

 _ **She wants to end this.**_

But even without my magic, I could see that just leaving wasn't an option.

"No." I said, pulling back to look at her. "This has been chasing you for too long, Erza. It'll never go away or end if it isn't stopped now. I've been reading this place's history. The tower's almost completed!" Erza's face went pale for an instant. She knew, from years of quiet searching, what this place was meant to be used for.

I got to see the look of terror cross the face of the bravest, fiercest woman I knew.

It was a look that didn't belong there. Not at all.

She controlled her expression quickly, putting on the deliberate commanding face she had worn through our battle with Phantom Lord.

"Then I'll deal with it as soon as you're safe. I'm not letting you get pulled into this anymore than you already are!" She dismissed her swords with a wave of her hand and started to pull me along. "Happy, come along!"

"Hey, listen!" I shook my head slightly as the words grated painfully on my nerves and patience. I checked the boundaries of my enchantment. Did Happy really just say...

Yeah...yeah he did.

 _Ok. Some bleed over to surroundings when used for a lengthy period of time. Deal with it later, beat bad guys now!_

"What is it?" The red haired wizard snapped at Happy. The bleedover seemed to have touched her too.

"Erza, Natsu and the other's are downstairs. Fae said that she felt them come in. You're acting like you've gotta do this all on your own But you don't!" Erza's gauntleted hand tightened on mine for an instant.

"I can't let anyone else get involved..." I pulled her forward, her legs had stopped moving as she wrestled with herself.

"You're a Fairy Tail wizard. They kidnapped me and used me to take you too. By the guild rules, what does that count as?" Erza took several deep breaths as she picked up her pace to a trot.

"A declaration of war with Fairy Tail."

"And fairies never fight alone." I said this as firmly as I could. It was the unspoken rule of the guild; you help your guildmates if they need it. The guild carefully policed all job requests to try and avoid having our members be on opposing sides of any conflict. It meant that our members were expected to put their jobs on hold to assist their fellows if they needed help.

But even with that reminder, I suspected Erza would still try to handle all of this herself. It was too personal for her to simply change tracks so quickly. And, since she still wanted to save Jellal and find some way to bring back the boy she had loved all those years ago, she didn't want to turn this into a war. She wanted to fix him. If she did her duty as a wizard and brought him in, he would be a criminal worthy of the death penalty.

 _ **Jellal is under the influence of possession magic.**_

Well, now. Gotta love the dramatic timing of the voice in my head!


	13. Take Flight

With Erza on hand, there wasn't anyone that we came across who could stop us. She told both myself and Happy to rest a little and get our strength back while she handled the fighting. I stayed alert and ready to jump in, just on principle, obviously, Erza really didn't need my help.

We went down a few more floors along the large spiral, Erza obviously in a hurry but pacing herself for our sake.

Happy settled onto my shoulder and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

"Erza's really scared, isn't she?" He said to me, so softly I might have imagined it.

"Yeah..." She was putting on a brave face for our sake. Because she felt that she had to. And to be perfectly honest, she did. She always had and so people had gotten used to that being who Erza was. The expectations of others wasn't the hard part, it was the fear of letting her friends down that was weighing on her.

 _ **Natsu and his team are on the next floor down.**_ I voiced this fact to Erza who paused and listened outside of the entryway into a room offshooting the main spiral chamber.

"And they are about to have company...!" She charged in with a roar, swords flashing. Erza wasn't doing much defending, dual wielding and going in full throttle with the attitude of an avalanche: If they can't stop you, why bother slowing down?

Seeing Erza fight up close like this was a different experience. Since she was doing it to protect us, and my trauma shield was still up, I was less affected. But swords were still a bloody way to fight and an awful way to die. My rattled noggin also meant I couldn't focus properly on my "Child Link" enchantment, so I no longer had the desensitizing effect of hundreds of years of combat experience.

Erza's strike, efficient and deadly, cleaved one man's neck open, between her shoulder and helm, sending an arterial spray containing across the floor.

My every sense screamed.

I saw death, smelt it, heard it going on around me.

 _Too much...toomuch!_

Nausea rolled in my stomach for a moment and I stepped back to try and get a grip on myself before my shields failed and I was assaulted by the full force of the tower's miserable history.

I was scared. I'd been scared this whole time, but now I was really feeling it.

"Fae!" Happy's cry remade me jump like a frightened deer. I saw a guard coming at me.

The analysis happened in less than an instant, my magic taking my fear and running through the fight or flight response, spotting all options.

 _Side, down the ramp._

He was too close to dodge and he'd be right behind me even if I managed.

 _Behind._

Empty air and deep drop to the bottom floor. 27 feet. Certainly far enough to kill me if I fell wrong.

 _Forward._

Through the enemy.

 _No opening._

I'd have to make one.

My hands lifted and drew my sword, it flash out on a sweeping, bright arc without my conscious thought. The magic of my enchantment guided not only my hands, but the placement of my feet as I put all of my sudden movement into one attack. The replica of the Kokiri sword slash over the man's ribs, somehow managing to cleave through armor and bone in a spray of crimson. My feet took me to the side, under his reach and attack and out of the way of his fall.

 _Fall?_

The move I'd performed suddenly registered.

In the heat of fighting, I'd ignored the phrases flickering in my mind. The Back Slice. Shield Parry. Helm Splitter. I'd needed all of them in one way or another. And now, a new one...one that could only be used with a weapon starting from the sheath.

 _The Mortal Draw._

The sword skill was one that was meant to defeat (kill) enemies with a single blow. And it had been my spell, the condensed knowledge of Link and all his incarnations skill, that was guiding me as I acted. It had been as easy and detached as if I were simply manipulating my body from a distance instead of being it in myself.

 _ **He will die.**_

 _And...I killed him._

I froze up as the implications hit me. The precise breakdown of what would be the cause of death. (30-60 min to die from cardiac arrest in case of a collapsed lung. Mere minutes if any organs were damaged) Happy had to push me out of the way as the man's swing, affected but not halted, came down where I had been standing. My movements hadn't been enough to get me clear with my shorter legs.

I landed heavily, eyes wide, gasping for breath and trying not to breathe because that meant tasting the blood as well as seeing it. The conflicting action made my head spin, and I quickly felt myself slip into shock.

I didn't hear much of anything as Erza slashed through the remaining enemies. I just kept on recalling how easily the magic from my hat had taken over and completed the move, manipulating my body and drawing more power out of it than I had thought it capable of using.

With the roaring going on in my head, the panic that I might have killed someone, that I had killed someone and all the other information still streaming from my magic into my brain, my mental shield finally shattered. Everything came crashing down on me.

 _Oh...I must have been using the shield to keep myself from breaking down from the strain, not just to keep the screaming out._

I sobbed brokenly, feeling as tears forced their way out of stinging eyes. I curled into a fetal position, trying to ride out this rollercoaster, regain some grip on myself.

 _Come on..._ Some small still composed part of me pleaded. _This isn't over yet! The tower needs a human sacrifice to jump start it! The only person with enough magic to do that is Erza! They want to kill Erza! Stop crying, get up!_ It was in vain. The echoed sounds of pain and cruelty resonated throughout the building's history and my head. I heard crying children, wanting their parents, their siblings, some form of comfort or escape from this nightmare. I heard cursing adults. I heard despair.

But worst of all underneath that all, I heard silence.

The silence of the resigned. Those who had given up completely.

 _Please..._ I begged my magic, as if it could turn itself off. _Please just stop..._

How could the kind boy from Erza's memories be capable of spearheading a horrifying project like this? How could he stomach it-

 _ **Jellal is under the influence of Possession Magic.**_ And to escape the pain, I dove head first into that history. It wasn't pleasant, but the less history I had to dig through, the less pain there was. And I could hopefully find answers. It wouldn't be as easy as actually getting a hand on Jellal himself, but it would be more than I had now...

-vVv-

Natsu tried again and against to elicit a response from the girl. She seemed to have frozen, eyes wide and unseeing and she was shaking like a leaf. The expression on her face broke his heart and made him furious at the same time.

Erza had explained the tower's history and how it involved her. But Fae hadn't seemed to hear them.

"Of course..." Lucy breathed, sounding like she was inches away from crying herself. "Fae reads the past...so she's feeling all of that. Everything all those poor people went through while they were here."

"She can do that, when she's so young?" Juvia didn't seem like she quite believed it.

"Yeah she can." Natsu picked Fae up carefully, making sure to keep his hands from heating to searing temperatures in his rage. "She saw my dad, Igneel." And she had shown him to everyone too. Had just listened to his words and made him appear just like he had always been. Flying free and proud. He had gotten to hear him say his name...

He held her close and consciously raised his body temperature. Fae was frightened and alone, but she needed to feel comforted and safe. This seemed like the best thing he could do for her. Hang onto her, keep her warm, not let her be alone.

 _C'mon Fae... It's alright, we're right here._ The guard Fae had downed was dead. Erza had put him out of his misery from the nasty gut wound Fae had given him. When Fae had entered this state, her hat had slipped off of her head. Her sword and shield had glowed briefly before turning into a knife and a broken piece of wood. She couldn't have much magic left... Lucy knelt to brush her hands over Fae's face, concern and sympathy shining on her face.

"And she alone besides the master knew that I had been here." Erza's fists tightened as rage flashed over her face. "She never said anything before, but that must be what she goes through every day. Every pain and secret in our past, she's seen it all. And there's no one she can talk to about it because she doesn't want to hurt anyone."

Natsu just held her, head bowed, praying to whatever god might be listening that far would come out of the trap her own mind had become.

Yes, that was Fae. She tried so hard to make people happy. She hated lying for any reason, she hated seeing people hurt, no matter who they were. And now, the past was hurting her, tearing into her. An enemy he couldn't protect her from.

A new surge of angry fire flared to life in his belly.

 _Jellal...Erza said Jellal used to be like Fae, so what made him change so much?_

"Erza. This...Jellal guy..." He caught the older girl's flinch just from him saying the guy's name. _You bastard..._ Natsu had never met the man, but he was gonna burn him to a crisp for making Erza hurt like this. "You said he was your friend, your team leader. You were all supposed to leave together. But he stayed. He stayed and he convinced people to finish building this damn place even though he hated it! Why didn't he leave?" Why was Erza the only one who left? Why didn't he follow his friend into freedom?

"You could say that I was the only one who escaped, but it would be closer to the truth that I was chased out...I have no memory of how I left that island. I just woke up later, alone. Without my friends. Jellal changed after he came to rescue me, after he took my place with the disciplinarians." her hand drifted up to her face, to her left eye, which he knew was a magical construct. When Erza had come to the guild, she had only had one eye. Master's grumpy old healer friend had made her a new one.

"I don't know why he didn't leave...They did something to him, I don't know what. But the darkness that took Jellal forced me to leave behind everyone. All of my friends, all the other slaves...he burned the boats after I had gone. I can only assume, going by what Sho and the others have said, that he put the blame for that on me." She looked, and smelt, like she was about to cry. Natsu would hug her, but his arms were already full, with Fae who was neither asleep nor awake though she did appear to be calming down a little. Happy was huddled close to her as well, carefully working his paws through her hair.

"He blamed me, and all of them believed it..."

"Not all." One man's voice sounded from the doorway on the other side of the room. Natsu reflexively moved to put the vulnerable child in his arms behind him and away from the unknown. It was the big guy with the metal jaw. His dark eyes rested on Erza with an unmistakable look. This man was one of them, or he may as well be. He trusted Erza and he loved her.

"What-! No..." Erza stepped forward, looking shocked. She automatically reached out to the man's most defining feature, his jaw, and she inhaled shortly. "Simon?"

"You know this guy?" Gray asked, his hands already having moved to cast if needed.

"I didn't believe him, Erza." Simon was ignoring Gray and focusing entirely on the red haired woman in front of him. "I know you'd never leave us behind if you had the choice..."

 _Well duh! It's Erza!_ Natsu looked down at Fae when she shifted, her bright blue eyes cracking open and looking around blearily. Like she didn't know where she was.

"Hey there, small fry. You doing ok?" Her eyes flicked up to him and she struggled.

"Na...tsu?" She asked, tears still leaking out of her eyes. "It hurts...they've all hurt so much...That...shadow, it hurt them...it's hurting him."

"What are you talking about, Fae?" Lucy frowned, looking at the girl. Her speaking made her look over at her.

"You...have to get it out of him...Get it out of Jellal and he'll come back." They all gathered around Fae. Simon pressed his fingers to his temple and appeared to focus on Fae.

"What are you doing?"

"Her sensitivity to her surroundings is making speaking difficult, but telepathic communication is still functional." he listened for a moment longer before he exhaled slowly. "I see. That explains a lot..." He looked at them all grim, and purposeful.

"Fae has read that Jellal is being possessed, she doesn't know yet by whom. This tower was built by their design and at their behest. None of what has happened in the last eight years is Jellal's doing."

Natsu didn't much care whether or not Jellal was the one at fault. That guy upset Erza. His damn tower made Fae sick.

 _It's all gonna burn..._ He vowed, glaring at the walls around them and the memories that he couldn't feel, but despised all the same because they could hurt his little friend and he couldn't do anything to protect her. _I'm not letting anything hurt my friends!_

-vVv-

I woke up being carried by someone.

 _ **Simon. He is the most limited in skill and thus wanted the others to be able to fight to their fullest.**_

" _It's good that you're awake."_ I couldn't feel the tower anymore...

"What-?"

" _I'm using my telepathy to shield you."_ Simon clarified. " _It was decided that since they cannot send you to safety alone, that you had to be brought along."_

I wanted to get a grasp of what was going on.

" _May I...?"_

" _Of course."_

I laid my hand on Simon's chest and breathed, searching for the story...

Simon had come, revealed that he had known the truth, and was believed. Simon had been in contact with Wally, Sho and Millianna and had them hear all of this. Sho took it the worst, having a mini meltdown at the realization that for years he had been blaming his big sister for something his trusted leader had done.

They were preparing an escape route alongside the remaining slaves while the Fairy Tail mages, who were unquestionably the most capable in a straight fight, were going after Jellal. Not alone as Erza had initially wanted, but as a team. Erza and Natsu were there for raw power and fighting ability, but while Gray was no slouch himself, he had a different purpose.

Gray knew a spell that could seal a sample of magic, (not Iced Shell, I saw he had gotten some scolding for even mentioning it) and with that, we could hopefully prove that Jellal had been manipulated and forced and he wouldn't take the brunt of the punishment for the crime. That was the end goal here. And it all had to happen sometime before Jellal with his plant in the Magic Council, got enough support to use Etherion on the tower and kill everyone in it.

(Something about that thought was making my magic, exhausted though it was, squirm quietly, but vigorously.)

But this plan couldn't go off smoothly. Of course not. Jellal, or whoever was pulling the strings here, wasn't gonna make it easy.

There were three enemy mages, assassins from the dark guild; Death's Head Caucus. They formed a team called Trinity Raven. They were the opposing player's in 'Heaven's Game'. A sick death match that Jellal was putting on for amusement. Simon had just heard Lucy and Juvia defeat the first, Vidaldus. _**Sound Wizard, Guitar Mage. Has actually weaponized headbanging.**_

 _What. The-_

The terrible trio, Gray, Natsu and Erza, had pancaked Fukuro, the second Raven. Or rather, Gray and Natsu had taken him out. Erza, hearing that the final member was still blocking their path, had gone ahead to take care of her, yelling back at the boys to 'not be late'.

" _I'll go and face this swordswoman! Take care of the owl and make it fast!" A rare, but beautiful smile flashed across her face. "I won't wait for you if you end up taking too long."_

" _We'll see who's gonna be waiting for who, Erza!" Natsu responded with a big, fiery grin._

" _Come on flamebrain, I think we just got ourselves a challenge!"_

Despite Fukuro having a jet pack and utilizing Natsu's motion sickness, Gray had forced him to drop the dragon slayer before he could complete his Capture magic and eat Natsu. (Literally eat. Eww.) Happy had caught his partner and from there, things had only gone uphill. Between fire raining down from above and ice from beneath, Fukuro was soon caught and crushed between the two opposing elements.

Erza had faced Ikaruga, the leader of Trinity Raven and a fellow swordswoman. The amount of focus the poetry spouting woman had put into her ability to cut magic was impressive. The assassin had managed to break all of the magic armor Erza had pulled out to use against her. Only once Erza put aside all of her magical protections and trusted her own skill above all else did she come away with a decisive victory.

" _Considering how you feel about her, I'm surprised that you didn't insist on going up there with her."_ This remark may have been a tiny bit insensitive. The 'Simza' ship was getting some serious, if one sided, support from Simon's feelings. Simon exhaled slowly, but not all of his tension went out of him. He was still extremely worried. Despite the fact that Erza could probably kick his ass seven ways to Sunday, he still worried and wanted to do everything he could to help her.

 _Now is really not the time._ I told the stupid shipping part of my brain and stuffed it all into a corner to hear Simon's reply.

" _I can't fight Jellal."_ No matter how much he might want to in the literal and rival sense. " _All I can do for Erza right now is see to it that you're safe."_ Simon might have been limited in his magic, but he would do whatever he could to make Erza smile. She was his whole world and had been for years.

 _I will not ship it. I will not ship it._

Somewhere, he had gotten a cloak for me and wrapped it around me. I did insist on taking the ratty old hat along with me. To my surprise, the runes I had put into it to give me Link's abilities were still there. They were empty, sure, but I could easily put power back into them and reuse it. I could see it wouldn't be as effective as the first time due to the poor quality of the materials and my inexperience. But this appeared to be a good way of using my magic...

 _Kinda wondering how Impa, Ghirahim or Zelda enchantments would work out..._

Simon got into the boat with me and Sho and we pushed off and out into the open sea. The magic fueled engine puttered along at a good clip until we were several hundred yards away from the tower.

I slumped into Simon's hold as we approached the small harbor. I could see Sho and the others there, shepherding the last of the boats out of the way and to freedom. I stiffened slightly even as we got into the last two and went out away from the tower.

" _They won't hurt you."_

" _Tell that to my trauma."_ Their intentions aside, I had still gotten a gun held to my head by these people. It felt wrong to be getting into a boat and just leaving the tower behind while all of my friends were still inside.

The plan was to wait and watch. In case anyone fell from above, Happy was supposed to catch them and deliver them down to us.

But realistically, I didn't have the strength to do anything else. Even though I had recovered enough to be able to read what was going on, I couldn't do anything that could help and would just end up getting in the way.

It was a bitter if sobering thought to realize just how far I had to go before I'd finally become more than a burden in a fight.

There came a massive explosion of crimson and orange fire from the top most level of the tower.

"Holy...that wasn't Jellal's magic." Wally sounded awed.

"No." I said with a faint smile. "That was Natsu's." _Yep, Fire Dragon's Roar._ "And since that's what normally comes out of his mouth, I wouldn't be surprised that he survived you shooting him." The Block man jerked before shooting a dirty look at me. Simon glared at him for less than an instant before he backed down though.

"Damn..." I could sympathize to an extent. My guild was extremely powerful. And the team I usually hung out with was one of the best. When the chips were down, their teamwork was impeccable thanks to how long they had been friends, and in raw power they were second to no one in the guild.

Suddenly, what looked like a massive drill of water burst out from beneath, sending our little boat, the last to leave, much further out into the ocean.

 _ **Juvia is angry.**_ I tried to peer into what had ticked the Water Wizard off but an ominous warning rang out in my head.

 _ **Etherion fires in ten minutes.**_

I started to shake slightly as I waited for the implications of...

 _Wait..._

A super weapon as big as an Etherion Blast ought to ensure that everyone inside the tower would die. But there was no such evidence of that in my magic. It could either mean it was more likely that everyone would get out before it hit but...

I recalled what I had learned from my delving through the past...

 _The Tower of Heaven, the R-system, was originally designed to resurrect someone from the dead. This one in particular was dedicated to bringing back the Black Wizard Zeref._

 _Following the law of Energy to Effect, to bring back a spirit of that power, you would need not only a suitable host vessel, but enough power to literally overwhelm the barrier between life and death._

Erza was the intended host, but the extra power...

Say, an Etherion blast's worth?

My face went pale.

This wasn't the final stage of the game. It wasn't even half time. Everything that we had been fighting against led up to this point. The information I hadn't been able to comprehend from my reading of the tower's schematics suddenly fell into place. The whole structure itself wasn't made to bring one person back to life. It was made to convert raw power into lacrima, a stable energy source to be used later. The top floor contained all the runework and circles that were needed to complete the ritual.

In theory anyway. By the rules of reality that I knew, and I know what that sounds like, they hadn't accounted for the second Great Law. The Law of Time, not just the Law of Death.

Depending on how long ago Zeref had died, they would need to reach back to the point where he died in order to recall his spirit to the land of the living. And that was without going into the need to prepare a suitable body for the spirit, the the backlash from touching the land of the dead even for a few seconds, etc, etc...

Messing with time was forbidden magic, but not nearly as taboo as bringing someone back from the dead. This whole thing would probably just collapse and burn without something there to account for that. And I had sensed nothing...Still, that didn't necessarily mean they didn't have a solution.

Another tidal wave of fury washed out of the Tower's lower level. _What is ticking Juvia off so much?_

I wriggled out of Simon's grasp and leaned over the side of the boat, tracing as large a circle I could manage in the water. I felt Simon's hand slip to my shoulder, balancing me and holding me steady.

"What are you doing?" Sho asked me.

"Trying to see what's happening." I ignored whatever he said next in favor of dredging up the right words.

" _Draumr kόpa."_ I waved my hand over the circle I had drawn, feeling all of their eyes on me as the water shimmered for a moment then shone like a mirror, showing me the large lowest level room of the Tower.

Juvia and Lucy were there. It was the same room where they had fought Vidaldus. But this time, the water was slowly rising and there was something in the water...

 _Grimfins too!? How many cobbled together artificial constructs do they have around here!?_

Grimjaws, Grimwings and Grimfins were ugly, mostly blind creatures that were made by filling a lacrima with an imprint of hatred and dropping it into a kettle of some vile concoction. These lacrima ended up making the creature's souls and they could channel small burst of concentrated magic out of their oversized toothy maws. But, you had to feed them of course. And what they preferred feeding off of was human misery. (Emotions are a surprisingly potent energy source. Just look at Natsu.) They were highly illegal to create and own. Each type was land, air and sea based respectively.

Juvia was fending off large numbers of the Grimfins and intermittently tossing them up into the air for Lucy and Sagittarius to pick them off. They were doing alright, but Juvia seemed to be literally boiling with rage...

 _ **One of the handlers told her that as soon as they were done with them, they would send a hoard of Grimwings after Gray.**_

 _Yep, that'll do it._

"How the heck are you doing this?" Sho demanded. "You're just a kid!" I flashed him a grin with one or two teeth too many to be entirely friendly.

"I'm Fairy Tail. We pretty much live to do the impossible." Sho glared at me, but I ignored him.

"You cannot be serious. You fought a whole bunch of guards by yourself, you cannot possibly have that much magic power."

"If you use only yourself as a measuring stick, then yes, I'll seem a little too strong for my age. But I've grown up in a guild with full support of my magic on every side, a tutor, and without misery and bitterness poisoning me. Which is not your fault and Erza will not hold against you, by the way." I added this last as the dark skinned blond narrowed his eyes at me.

 _Probably not a good time to tell him that they can do much more if they had the time to practice. Jellal didn't want them getting any ideas, so he restricted the magic they were taught in order to keep them under his thumb._ Misery and heartache made for an excellent, if painful way to expand one's magical core. Especially in children. That kind of strain made it so people broke through more easily.

"Our different circumstances, coupled with my magic being fundamentally different from yours, mean that yes, I can very well do this. Now hush." I looked back at my section of scrying water and concentrated...

 _Gray and Natsu._

They were making their way through the debris to the top floor. There was a lot of falling rubble around them. And they weren't fighting someone else, or one another so that meant the chaos must be coming from...

 _Erza._

The picture shifted to let us all see Erza duking it out with Jellal, a mask of grim determination on her face. Jellal wasn't managing to get off many attacks, he was mostly on the defensive. But he was still talking with a positive evil expression on his face. Cruelty seemed to be etched into his every feature and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, the red tattoo down the side of his face looked like it was cracking open, revealing oozing blackness inside.

 _Waiting for Erza to tire herself out so he can really screw with her head, is he?_

No matter. Once Natsu and Gray arrived on the scene, Erza would pull herself together, drawing on their presence for strength and they would shut this guy down. Capturing him and putting him into a well cast Zone of Truth would reveal that someone else had been behind all of this. They might not be able to let him go considering that they probably couldn't find anyone else to catch and pin the blame to. But it should at the very least get a lighter sentence and a stay of the death penalty.

All of us stayed where we were, watching the scrying in the water as Erza and Jellal fought. I wasn't skilled enough to get sound as well as sight, but I could see Jellal's mouth move and Erza's face fall for a split second. Simon's hand tightened minutely on my shoulder before he forced his grip to loosen.

About 2 seconds later, Natsu and Gray burst in. Jellal went from occasionally attacking and mostly talking to full defense. I could see that Natsu was roaring something at him as bombarded the blue haired man with fire.

The three of them were slowly gaining ground against Jellal. His movements were getting more and more abrupt and strained. The fact that he was holding out this long was a testament to his enormous skill. When those three worked in tandem, they were capable of a terrifying amount of destruction. Not to mention Gray and Natsu's magic usually morphed into something completely new and different whenever it collided, proof of their unified intent. Everything the three Fairy Tail wizards were throwing out right now was focused on Jellal.

 _Boy, I don't envy him..._

 _ **Etherion fires in 2 minutes.**_

Then as I watched, Jellal managed to get a solid hit in on Gray and he went flying out the open side of the tower.

"Gray!" _He doesn't have a shirt on. Happy can't catch him!_ I didn't think, I just jumped. My superman jump boost flashed into existence around my legs and suddenly I was soaring. One foot off of the side of the boat and up as far as I could manage, quite a respectable amount, and I reached-

 _The wind in my face as I ran over the rooftops of the city of Magnolia, sheer, exultant laughter tearing free from me as I flew over the people below, feeling untouchable._

 _An endless sky with nothing but a horizon in sight and clouds below._

 _The rush of speed and laughter that came as the coaster rounded a bend._

 _Voice of the air currents whispering ancient stories, telling me names and of far off places._

" _Fly!"_

-vVv-

 _Aw crap._

Gray thought dismally as the air rushed past him.

 _I walked right into that spell._

He wondered if hitting water would be as painful as hitting the ground.

 _Natsu's never gonna let me live this down_

Provided he lived through this fall of course. Happy was diving after him, a look of intense concentration of his little kitty face.

 _He's not gonna make it. He can't catch me anyway. No shirt for him to grab._

Ur did always say that his habit was going to get him in trouble one day.

Something slipped around his chest, holding onto him tightly and his fall seemed to shift-

"Gotcha!" _No way..._

"Fae?!" Gray could just barely crane his head around to see short wavy blueish hair get whipped straight by the wind as Fae flew on four iridescent, rune covered orange wings reminiscent of a dragonfly's. The same basic color as the runes that she produced in her writing.

"When did you learn how to fly?!"

"About ten seconds ago. Hold on!" She increased her speed until Gray had to squint against the force of the wind.

"What's the big hurry?"

"Etherion fires in less than a minute! The tower will absorb all of the energy and convert it to lacrima, so everyone inside will live if they get into a sealed room. But if we're too close and outside, we'll get fried! There isn't enough time for me to fly out of range!" She was aiming for a hole he had blown in the side of the building while fighting the owl headed freak with Natsu.

They had barely passed the walls when Gray heard and felt a high intensity of incoming magic, almost blinding in its power. He turned in her grasp, putting his arms around Fae and getting his hands together.

"Ice Make: Great Dome!" He got a foot on the ground and twisted them around so he was on top of Fae, tucking her underneath him as the thick shield of ice expanded around them both.

He didn't fancy busting out of a giant lacrima without some breathing room. No sooner had he put up his protection than his vision seemed to white out as a roar filled his ears and he didn't remember anything for a bit...

He didn't hear anything. He felt something though. Someone gently slapping his face with a small hand.

 _Fae._

Gray's eyes flew open.

The girl was looking down at him with obvious worry shining on her face. Her lips moved but he couldn't hear her for some reason. He shook his head, reaching for his ears automatically. Her hands slipped down and covered them briefly and she said something. Then the white noise in the back of his mind vanished.

"-hear me now?" She asked, looking none the worse for wear.

"How long was I out?" Gray asked, rubbing his head.

"Only a few minutes." There was blue stuff everywhere that was too warm to be ice... _Is this...?_

"Holy crap, all of this is lacrima?" He stared at their surroundings. Floor, ceiling walls, it was all coated in a gleaming layer of the magical crystal. It looked as though it would have filled the whole room if not for him throwing up that shell around them.

"Yeah. It's what the main tower is built for. To translate a large burst of magic power into lacrima and hold onto it." Fae looked much better than when Erza's big friend had carried her out of the tower. She looked awake and the gleaming wings on her back definitely added to her overall energy. The glow of the blue crystal around him was exactly the same glow as was emitting from Fae's eyes.

It hit Gray then.

"Wait a sec, since when do you have healing magic?" He hadn't been able to hear and now he could so-

"I didn't heal you exactly, I just reminded your ears that they were supposed to be working. Don't worry about it. We've got bigger problems." She got up and looked back outside the gap they had come in through. Gray belated noticed that the shield he had hastily thrown up had only partially survived as he looked outside.

He hissed in a sharp breath between his teeth.

The sky was filled with the ugly, pink, skinless flesh of Grimwings. The flying monsters that some of the guards downstairs had been riding on.

They were circling over the two boats that contained Erza's remaining friends and beyond them the larger fleet of boats with other escaping prisoners.

 _Gotta help them._ Erza and Natsu could take care of the guy upstairs. Those people were sitting ducks down there. Where they stood now, the two of them had the high ground.

"How long can you keep those wings out?" He asked the smaller girl. Since they were here, and the people below needed aerial support, he thought he would take a leaf out of Natsu's book and team up with a flying partner.

Fae grimaced.

"Keep them out? A while, probably, but I won't be good for anything else. Just don't do anything with lots of recoil. I don't want to drop you."

"You got it. Let's go." Fae grabbed him just under the arms and lifted off, soaring out into the open air.

Gray experienced a moment's vertigo at the sight of the deep sea far below him. But he focused instead on calling up his magic to rain hell down on the monsters that were trying to attack helpless people.

" _Ice Make: Lance!"_


	14. Aftermath

With me as his wings, Gray cleared the skies in less than five minutes.

"Can you get me back up there? We need that evidence if Erza's buddy isn't gonna get carted off to jail after this!" Gray asked once we were finished. My arms were aching and my magic was running dangerously low.

"Can't...lost too much altitude...not enough magic to get it back." I had been determined to last out as long as it took for Gray to finish taking down those Grimwings and their riders, but my temporary surge of magical adrenaline was petering out.

"Don't push yourself then. We'll go back the long way. Get me down to the entrance."

 _ **Jellal is attempting to manipulate Erza's emotions and push her into the sacrificial lacrima while she was distracted.**_

 _ **Erza has just punched Jellal in the face.**_

 _You go, girl!_

"It's all blocked by the lacrima. The room we were in was filled with your ice, so we didn't get trapped inside it. Only way left to get up to where they are is to fly...just give me a few minutes to get some power back, and I'll get you there." The guard and their Grimwings had been stationed in specially made bunkers and had come out as soon as they knew the coast was clear. They had been cheering, certain of their victory. At least up until they met a cold and wet fate in the ocean below.

That fight appeared to not be going too terribly for all that Gray wasn't in position to get us some evidence. _Just a few minutes._ I vowed, glaring at my abysmally small overall magic reserve. _Just a few more minutes and then we're going!_

I flew him back down to the boats and deposited Gray in the boat with Simon and Sho.

"Just how angry will Erza be that you just did that?" Simon asked me very dryly. I shrugged, still high on the euphoria of finally achieving flight.

"Pretty mad."

"And as soon as she gets done with that, she'll be proud." Gray groused. "Fae could get away with murder in the guild. Everyone loves her."

"Oh please, never murder Gray. No one gets away with that for long. Extortion, blackmail, maybe a little guilt tripping, but never murder."

 _ **Jellal has managed to put a binding spell on Erza and paralyze her.**_

" _This is your purpose in life Erza. We two were fated to unite and resurrect Zeref."_

" _Shut up!" Natsu sent Jellal flying back, away from Erza. "Erza is one of us! She's of Fairy Tail she's not working with you, you sick bastard! Now get out of her friend!"_

 _ **Jellal has used Grand Chariot and caused a large amount of damage to the lacrima.**_

 _ **Natsu is smashing everything he can get his hands on.**_

"I consider my point proved." I stuck my tongue out at him before I looked at Simon. I had felt an update as we left the tower so...

"As we were still buzzing around out there, I started feeling a whole lot ethernano get sucked towards the top of the tower. That place is primed to blow. Can you get in contact with Lucy and Juvia and tell them to get out?"

"On it." Simon replied, touching two fingers to his temple and conveying the message.

" _I'm not gonna let anyone make Erza cry!"_

 _Hoo boy...Whelp, Jellal's screwed._

 _ **Jellal has royally pissed Natsu off and he has started to-**_

 _That idiot!_ I whirled in midair, staring at the top of the tower.

"What is it, Fae?"

"Natsu's eating the Etherion!" I said, aghast. Looking down and recasting my scrying spell.

"What!?" Gray sat up so sharply he rocked the boat.

"No one can eat Etherion! That's crazy!" Millianna had captured Happy and was cuddling the unfortunate tomcat quite aggressively.

"You don't know Natsu then." Gray said grimly, half rising and looking closely at the image I had made on the water. "Part of a Dragon Slayer's basic magic is to be able to eat their own element to regain lost magic power."

"Etherion definitely has Fire Magic in it. Thing is, it has a lot more than just fire." I kept watching the screen in the water as I landed back on the boat and listened intently for any update from my passive magical ability.

"So you're saying the fool's gonna give himself magical food poisoning for nothing!?" Wally demanded. "This is Erza's backup?"

Suddenly we all heard an almighty roar as Lucy and Juvia surfaced, held inside a shell of water. A thundering, rolling sound that shattered the air it touched with the sheer magnitude of power that it conveyed and the fury it held.

I had never heard anything closer to matching what I imagined an angry Smaug would sound like.

"What was that?" I didn't hear who asked. I was just watching my scrying spell...

" _The Dragon comes."_ My own voice sounded strange in my ears as the echoes of the roar reverberated through the air.

 _ **Natsu has entered Dragon Force.**_ The implications were that that took a lot of power, so...

I cupped my hands around my eyes.

" _Scan for concentrations of magic."_

I looked over the entire tower and was shocked to see that it was almost completely dark. All the light, and therefor magic, was concentrated at the top of the tower and it was blinding! And all of it was packed into one person!

 _Natsu..._ I was stunned, amazed and awed at what I saw. _Natsu just ate most of an Etherion Blast!_ He had taken in a tiny bit of the Etherion lacrima, and through that had pulled in a staggering amount of raw power as if it were fire.

 _ **The stronger the Dragon Slayer is naturally, the more it will take for them to enter Dragon Force for the first time.**_ I was mildly terrified at the implication that it took an Etherion Blast to kick start Natsu into the Dragon Force.

Through my scrying spell, we watched as Natsu roared, bluish demi-liquid Etherion dripped down from his mouth even as scales grew around his eyes and on his hands and forearms and he simply radiated power and the instinctive terror one would feel facing an actual dragon.

Natsu snarled something at Erza, who's face tightened angrily for a split second.

" _You still care about this guy, even though they've used him to hurt you. Don't fight your friend, Erza. I'll fight him for you! You just smash up this tower nice and good so they can't ever use it again!"_

" _I'm counting on you, Natsu!"_

Natsu then went head to head with Jellal Fernandes, a Ten Wizard Saint and member of the Magic Council through his alter ego, Siegrain. And he was giving him the beat down of the century. I had thought watching Natsu fight Gajeel through my Retrocognition was staggering. But this was on a whole new level. Nothing Jellal threw at him made contact or so much as phased him. Natsu was in full on rage mode and wasn't gonna stop until his enemy was roasted to his satisfaction. I switched over to watch what Erza was doing and saw that she had pulled out her Purgatory Armor, repaired after her fight with Ikaruga, and was using that to smash through as much lacrima as she could, an expression of fierce exultation on her face.

" _You kept me prisoner for years. And in all that time, I didn't dare speak of this place for fear of what might happen to my friends. BUT I WILL NOT BE SILENCED ANYMORE!"_

Yeah, I couldn't imagine how therapeutic it must be for Erza to be able to tear that place down with her own two hands. She was really ripping into it too, lacrima was flying everywhere. Whoever was pulling the strings must be steamed that all their years of work, plotting and scheming was coming down around their ears. When Erza went all out, the surrounding terrain trembled and despaired.

Those who had been slaves there as well were either laughing, crying or cheering as Erza shredded the icon of their pain.

A particularly loud crash made me look back to see how Natsu was handling things.

 _ **Jellal is attempting to cast Abyss Break.**_

 _Ok...kudos to him for having enough power to even try that after everything but..._

 _ **He failed due to his injuries and lack of magic power.**_

 _-that. Yeah._

It was just not smart to try and cast a massive spell like that after going toe to toe with Erza, Gray and Natsu for any length of time. Jellal might have been able to estimate his own strengths had he been the one in control, but whoever was actually in charge here wouldn't have that same instinctive awareness of his own strength.

" _You'll never know what it means to be free! Not as long as you're possessed by that spirit! Why are you letting him manipulate you? You can do it, Jellal! FREE YOURSELF!"_

We all watched as Natsu delivered the mother of all punches to Jellal's face, sending him crashing down into the giant lacrima with enough for to send cracking spidering throughout the entire structure.

"Holy..." Wally looked slightly ill.

"We'd've had to fight this guy?" Millianna looked petrified at the very thought. Happy managed to wriggle free from her grasp, wings popping out as he looped and soared around us, cheering madly.

"Yeah! You show him, Natsu!"

"Nice hit!" Gray's grin was all teeth and satisfaction.

"Oh wow." Lucy looked amazed all over again.

"On my..." Juvia was somewhat...relieved.

Considering it could very easily have been her on the receiving end of that not too long ago, Juvia's reaction made a lot of sense.

"'Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.'" I quoted dryly. It made the Fairy Tail Wizards laugh.

Their happiness and relief aside, I was listening to something else. A voice echoing through the past to reach my ears.

" _We can't escape and they're not gonna let us go! So the only thing we can do is fight!"_

A voice that I dimly recognized as belonging to a young Erza. But why was that memory coming out?

I looked around and saw that it was coming from Simon. His shoulders were slumped in obvious relief, a burden having fallen away from his shoulders as well. And tears were leaking out of both his good eye and the one he covered with an eyepatch. I hated seeing a grown man cry. (Unless it was Elfman when he was being dramatic. Then it was just kinda funny.)

Erza had been living with the guilt and fear from the Tower for eight years. Unable to do anything to save the people she knew was still there.

But Simon had been trapped here for all that time. Loving the woman everyone else believed had betrayed them, and never daring to say it aloud for fear of what might be heard. And his feelings had never once wavered or changed.

 _ **Simzaaaaaa!**_

Erza's battle might be over. But she had been far from the only warrior caught up in it.

I flitted over to the big man, my wings still out, cause I wasn't gonna put them away for a long time if I could help it, and hugged him. He looked like he needed it.

" _What is it?"_ Simon appeared to favor telepathy over speech. The jaw made it difficult to talk, I guessed.

" _You were crying. I know it's not because you're sad or anything, but everyone should have someone around to hug them when they're crying."_ I pulled back and traced the bulky prosthetic. " _I bet Porlyusica could make you a new jaw, and give you a new eye too..."_

" _But...why?"_ I blinked up at him.

" _Because when the fight's over is when the scars start to heal."_

"Fae, your wings are starting to-" I jerked in the air as my magic power sputtered.

 _OK. I guess I have to stop..._ I dismissed both my wings and the scrying spell. Simon caught me handily before gently placing me back in the boat.

"Is it safe to go back there?" Gray asked, tense and ready. "We still need some of that Possession Magic residue."

I rubbed my eyes, weariness swamping me from every side...

"Dunno. Simon?" He checked, fingers at his temple...then his eyes flew open with alarm.

"The lingering energy in the lacrima has become unstable. Erza's going to try and redirect it, but we need to get back out of the potential blast radius." The implications of that were-

"Redirect it?!" Gray snapped, he and the other professional wizards sitting up, all the relief from Natsu's victory gone and replaced with urgency.

"With a lacrima of that size, the only way she would be able to do that is by-"

"-getting inside it!" Juvia and Lucy appeared to have bonded since they were very much on the same wavelength now as opposed to Juvia disliking Lucy because of her purely platonic friendship with-

 _ **Gray thinks Lucy is very attractive and he likes her quite a bit. But he's too much of a bro to Natsu to make a move if he doesn't first get a clear sign that it would be reciprocated on her part.**_

 _...Just shut up._ Ok, that goes under things that will never be spoken of within Juvia's hearing. Better yet, just never spoken of, period.

 _Focus on the matter at hand!_

Erza was right that if she put her magic into the loose ethernano and redirected it upward, she could keep it from exploded and taking us all with it. But in a merger of that depth-

"Wh-What does that mean?" Sho demanded, staring hard at the three wizards.

"It means she's going to kill herself!"

"It might work if she hadn't spent most of the last several hours fighting and burning through magic power. But as she is now, it's suicide!" Lucy's hands were gripping the edge of the boat so tightly I thought that she would break the wood.

"Simon, you gotta stop her! There's gotta be another way!"

"I'm trying to connect, but she's blocking me out!"

There was little more than barely curbed chaos and panic in our two boats and Juvia's water shell. But there literally wasn't anything we could do. Happy couldn't reach it in time flying, I could either even if I wasn't exhausted. Juvia might be able to, but damaging the lacrima would just set it all off and potentially take some of the nearby coast with it.

I felt something then. A dark shadow that had been lingering nearby that simply left. _Whatever was possessing Jellal just got out of him._ There was a few more moments of uncertainty and worry.

Then the impending tension, for me at least, just seemed to stop...

 _ **Jellal took Erza's place.**_

The tower exploded with light. Natsu had eaten a lot of the raw ethernano, but there was still more than enough to put on an impressive light show as pure magical power shot heavenward. I had never seen anything like it and probably (hopefully) never would again. I could feel Jellal's form strain to serve as a conduit for all that power.

" _All I've done for the last 8 years is cause pain...Please, please, let me atone for it...let me make it right..."_

"Erza!"

"Erza's alright." I pointed as a sphere of golden magic shot out of the top of the tower, but instead of following the beam up, it descended towards the ocean. "That was Jellal...he threw off the possession spell in time to take Erza's place, and get her and Natsu out of the tower...They're alright but he-"

The top 100 feet of the lacrima tower exploded in a wash of magical fire before I could finish. I flinched as I felt Jellal leave my story. Enemy or not, Erza's memories had been really caught up in him. And she would mourn him bitterly. But privately, where no one else could see.

 _No. I won't let you face that alone Erza._ I resolved quietly. _I lived it through you. I saw everything that you suffered. No matter what, I will not let any of my friends go through that kind of pain alone._

-vVv-

I slept for a day and a half after we returned to Akane Resort. Natsu, of course, broke my record by sleeping for three full days.

When I finally woke up, I was informed that the Rune Knights had pretty much handled the cleanup. Apparently, when boatload after boatload of refugee slaves, including nearly 50% of every missing person's case over the last decade, had started coming ashore on Akane Beach, they had come in, pushed all the tourists out and started taking care of business like they should.

The Fairy Tail wizards were questioned, of course, even I was questioned once I woke up because I was one of the victims who had been kidnapped. I wasn't optimistic about the whole thing. And unfortunately, regardless of what we said, Jellal was being blamed for the whole thing.

But since in addition to the whole tower nonsense, he had been infiltrating the Magic Council and the 10 Wizard Saints, it stood to reason there would be more than a slap on the wrist coming even if we had gotten the proof we needed.

All of the slaves were the tower were tested and treated for both their psychological issues and the various effects from their labor intensive lifestyle. Of course Erza's little group of friends were screened even more carefully due to them possessing magic. But ultimately they were excused and put on probation for about two years.

Erza spent as much time as she could with them. Her joy at finally being forgiven by them knew no bounds. In other news, Juvia was cutting back a little on the stalking of Gray and was directing her attention towards an alternate obsession.

"I suppose that one might be worth looking into." She mused coolly assessing the man, a relatively decent looking one who was not staring and drooling at the two sunbathing friends but was focusing instead on a book.

 _That's right, people! Juvia is trying to play matchmaker! Heaven help all the single adults when she meets Mira and yay for being too young to count!_

"I...really appreciate what you're trying to do, Juvia. But I don't have time for that with as much as I'm working. I'm barely staying ahead of the rent as it is." Lucy had recovered from the fighting admirably. She had actually been helping Millianna try and tone down her obsession.

"Actually since we were involved with this, the guild's getting a hefty compensation for bringing it down. Not sure how long it will last given your track record for breaking stuff, but..." I was just being brought along because I didn't feel like infringing on Erza's reunion with her old friends. I was working through the condensed version of my notes on The Fellowship of the Ring to get an idea of what I could next work on. My Link hat had gotten lost somewhere along the way, and even then-

 _Red, the slight tug of a sword passing through bone, the smell-_

Yeah, I wasn't really ready to so much as look at a sword without some time to get my head on straight and face that facts about what had happened back then.

 _I killed a man._

It was something a lot of wizards had to deal with, especially in a combat oriented Guild like Fairy Tail. But it still sucked rocks to have that bouncing around in my head along with the rest of the clutter and memories. And it also sucked to have almost perfect recall.

"Oh really? That's a relief. I was super worried about needing to cram some small jobs to get the rent money." Lucy sighed and leaned back in her beach chair with a brilliant smile.

"And you don't have to pay for the extra nights here." As apology for the trouble that had come at us while in their property, the resort and hotel we were staying at had extended our passes from three days to a whole week. After Master had stopped yelling after hearing everything that had gone down, he outright ordered us to stay on vacation.

"In other words: The real vacation may now begin!" Lucy sighed happily, content to doze in the sunlight with a cold drink close at hand.

It was approaching the end of summer and the day was pleasantly warm without being boiling. A pretty much perfect beach day, typical of the area and season. I saw plenty of people just lounging about in swimsuits, relaxing and enjoying themselves.

But Gray still stripped. Because of course he did.

"Gray, this isn't a nude beach. Keep your swim trunks on." I reminded him, making him snatch his hands away from the article of clothing.

"Wasn't doing anything!"

"Sure, sure." Juvia was covering her eyes, not very effectively, and gazing at the object of her obsession affection with a rapt look on her face.

 _Seriously, that's kinda creepy_

"I don't think my heart could have taken the sight..."

"You sound way too thrilled for that to be true." _That's Lucy for ya. Blunt and sarcastic as ever about her friends habits._

I giggled as Juvia snapped back at her.

"Are you trying to deny that you would not have relished the chance to look as well?"

Lucy snorted. "The chances aren't as rare as you think. I've only been in the guild for a couple months, Juvia. And in that time, I think everyone has seen Gray naked at least twice." I gave her a lot of credit for developing such a thick skin towards the resident Ice Wizard's compulsive habit.

"So many women who've seen my beloved uncovered...so many rivals!"

"Ok! I'm leaving, come on Fae!" Gray slung me over his shoulder and booked it away from the slightly steaming water mage and the reclining celestial spirit mage. I just sighed and kept ahold of my syllabary as I was carried off and away.

"Soooo...why?"

"First, it's weird it is to have them talking about...that, while I can hear! Second, Erza will skin me if she finds out I let you hear it!"

-vVv-

I went out flying every night that week. Flying helped me not remember. I probably should have been sleeping, but the rest didn't come. It brought nightmares and memories instead. I had to be well and truly exhausted to not have those dreams, and that meant burning a little extra energy,

I turned a few loop-de-loops in the air, using the same basic enchantment that I had spontaneously discovered while rushing to save Gray from falling to his death.

The orange rune covered wings were a little more deftly shaped than Freed's wings, closer to than Evergreen's fairy wing enchantment in appearance. I had been tweaking the enchantment a little now that I could reliably call it into existence. After some experimenting, I found that four crescent shaped dragonfly wings gave me the best combination of speed and handling. It was a matter of instinct to move, but the finer details had to be ironed out still. Turning exactly on this point, where to begin a dive and how steep to make it. When to pull out of a dive to make a perfect landing. How to hold myself motionless in the air in a hover. All little things like that that I was determined to master, ASAP. Now that I had my wings, I was going to be a champ at using them!

It also meant my test runs for the past few nights had ended with me occasionally crashing into the ocean, but better that than land.

The moon was bright enough for me to see when I flew up the picturesque coast to get away from gawkers. I dipped low to skim over the ocean's surface, keeping my body straight and aligned with my trajectory to minimize drag, letting a hand trail through the spray that flew up towards me. The sea breezes played around me, like The breath of some massive, living entity... The ocean never really slept. It was always alive, always breathing, always awake.

I eventually found a boulder outcropping to rest and catch my breath and watch the silver moonlight play over the water's surface.

"You're quite good for only having started a few days ago." Erza's soft remark made me jump and turn to look at her. She landed on the same boulder in her Blackwing armor, one of the suits that let her fly, before she shifted back into her PJ's. "I've been meaning to talk to you for awhile now." I tensed slightly, nerves singing in the back of my head.

"What about?" Somehow, my voice seemed especially young when set against hers. Erza sat down beside me, eyes steady on my face.

"The spell you were using at the tower when I first found you and Happy. What was it?" My fingers clenched briefly.

"I...I was using a story. The one about Link and stuff."

"Yes, I thought I recognized the hat." I swallowed and brought my knees up to my chest.

"It hasn't gotten to the climax yet, but in that story. Link's descendants end up being...guardians of sorts against the same kind of evil. So their skill is passed down from generation to generation. Every now and then, the first Link's spirit gets reincarnated into a new body bearing the same name. And the instincts that he developed in his previous lives follow him. So even if the current bearer is just a farmer, he can still pick up a sword and fight with it."

"So the spell you wrote was meant to tap into several lifetimes worth of swordsmanship skill, give you a fighting chance even though you don't know much about the art, while still having the limits and abilities if a child." I nodded mutely, regret and guilt mixing up inside of me.

 _It was so easy..._

The act itself had been easy. The motion I had practiced with Erza in her efforts to train me, mixed with the recollection of the Mortal Draw from all the times Link had used similar moves in his lifetimes...

"Fae..." I barely flinched when her hand rested on my shoulder. "Fae, I know..."

And she did. I felt that she did.

She had picked up a sword for the first time when she was only a little older than I was right then. She had done it to fight for her freedom, she had lead her fellows in a riot against their masters to win back their lives. Regardless of how it had turned out, when the dust settled and Erza was free, she had needed to face the consequences that she had fought and killed people.

"It was easy..." I whispered. "I thought that it wouldn't be that easy. That the bones would stop the blade, that it would be harder to do-"

"That the world would stop and give you a second to think about what you were about to do. That you could have a moment to decide if you really wanted to go through with it."

I buried my face in my knees as I started to cry again.

"Fae, I saw what happened. That skill is definitely magically based." I hiccuped as I nodded, still hiding my face.

"It's a special skill... Link came up with it during a war period, to win duels quickly. The Mortal Draw. A downward slash from out of the sheathe to cut from between the neck and shoulder and end the fight." Erza pulled me closer to her, one arm around me, my head resting on her shoulder.

"It's alright..."

 _No it's not!_

"I killed him, Erza...he'd have died in less than an hour. I killed him, I felt his story end, and I wrote it, I made it end-"

"I know..." She swallowed, lifting her hand to run through my wind swept hair. "I ended it before he could suffer for too long."

"How...?" I asked, hating how weak and childish I sounded. "How do you...?" _How do you come to terms with the fact that you have killed someone? That you've taken someone's life? You took someone's loved son or daughter and made it into a corpse..._

"Consider this." Erza's voice was soft and heavy. This was not a laughing matter. "What would have happened if you hadn't done it?" The possibility opened up quickly to both my mind and my magic.

"He'd have managed to hit me." I caught Erza's soft but firm look as she gazed down at me. _No...that isn't honest._ He hadn't been aiming to disable like the others had been. I couldn't glance over that with a soft lie even to make things gentler.

"He'd have killed me."

"And?"

"And Happy. He'd have spread my brains all over the floor and then done the same to Happy."

That wasn't an attractive prospect either, but it didn't change the facts of what had happened.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Fae. There will be other times as a wizard that you will face similar situations like what happened at the tower. Where it will come down to a conflict where your choices will either be to let yourself and your friends die, or to act and stop whoever is trying to hurt them in whatever way is available to you." Her mouth curved up a little bitterly. "The man who taught me the finer details of combat said to me: 'Mercy is for the victor to give'. As wizards in our field, we see a lot of fights. People count on us to be able to fight the battles they can't. And we do run the risk of killing our enemies if we are not careful. Or if the situation necessitates it. I face that far more than the others just because of my magic." No...there wouldn't be very many ways for Erza, rough, strong and powerful Ezra, to be gentle with her overwhelming strength.

She held out her hand, summoning her magic circle momentarily and a sword fell through it into her palm. A short sword similar to the Kokiri Sword, clean, bright and well cared for. I cringed away from the sight of the blade, but she held me fast. Not letting me hide, nor forcing me to face it.

"Swords are tools, Fae. They have no inherent will of their own. They serve their wielders. So it is your responsibility to face the fact that whenever you pick one up, you have to be ready and willing to hurt or kill someone." The red haired woman gazed down at me with understanding in her gaze as she drew the hilt closer to me. "Magic is no different. It's an extension of our will, we choose what to do with it, and we deal with the consequences that follow. Some people don't want to have the kinds of consequences you're facing right now. So they direct themselves to lines of wizardry that keep them away from those negative consequences. I don't know how much of your magic will be based on using weapons, or fighting. Given your talents, you could literally become anything you chose. But whether you choose to go down the warrior's path or the scholar's, I will lend you all the support I can."

I simply stayed where I was, leaning into the older woman's hold and allowing my guilt to leave my body and stop tormenting me.

She had posed a serious question though.

What did I want to be?

Did I want to be what Erza was? Or something more akin to Levy's line of work? Did I work alone or work with a team? Just looking at Freed as my example proved I could be both.

 _I want to be with my friends._ I didn't care what I did so long as I could be with them. In that case, the better question was: Was I content letting others protect me, or did I want to do my part and protect them as well? No matter what...

 _The true soldier chooses to fight not because he hates what stands before him, but because he loves what he stands for._

 _I do love them. I love my guild. My family...If there is anything in this world worth fighting for, it's that._

I reached out and took the sword from Erza's hand.

-vVv-

Natsu was up and about after eating half his body weight in food, yelling, laughing and seeming none the worse for wear for our little jaunt into madness. (Which I was not entirely sure hadn't ended yet.) Then we actually had a few days of rather nice vacation. Erza brought our two groups together and we actually had a good time. Simon was hands down my favorite of her childhood friends though. He was an excellent height for climbing and didn't mind me doing so.

On the matter of Simon, we had gotten in touch with Makarov to start convincing Porlyusica to fix up Simon with a new face. Or...his old one, I guess. And we got him some clothes, because frankly, only Gray really had an excuse to go around like he normally does, and even there it's a flimsy one.

It was certainly a welcome relief for us all to be there and alright. While we were there, there were many in depth discussions of magic, first-hand observation of the benefits of a dopeslap and watching Millianna chase Happy along the beach. It only really hit a snag when we remembered that technically, Juvia wasn't a Fairy Tail wizard. (Yet.) Thus, while she had gotten a complimentary rest period at Akane for her involvement in the Tower of Heaven, she didn't have as long as we did so she had to leave while we had a few days left. Her farewells were said with many smiles and many tears. And also clingy hugs, and attempts to get Gray to confess. So pretty much the same as whenever he was within sight. It was kinda uncomfortable to watch and I wasn't even on the receiving end of it. Gray was, for very obvious reasons, not impressed.

Juvia was depressed accordingly and spoke to me about it.

"My current appearance doesn't seem to have touched my Gray's heart. I must work to alter myself in such a way that he will notice me!" She gave me a tight hug that only left me slightly wet. "When we meet again, Fae, I'll be a full member of Fairy Tail!"

 _I don't really think it's the appearance that makes the difference, Juvia. It's your attitude that's kinda weird..._

I guess she was just embracing the whole idea of having friends and taking it to the next level very quickly. And that's what she was, she was my friend. I seemed to be incapable of having a normal one...

I hugged her back with a smile.

"Looking forward to it, Juvia. See you then."

-vVv-

 _ **They are planning on leaving in the night to let Erza get on with her life without being bogged down by them.**_

Erza suspected that her friends would try something like this. All save Simon, who still hadn't made a move, much to my exasperation. She had stayed up and we were waiting alongside her.

I held onto my prop with a broad grin on my face as I waited.

"Fae, what's the stick for?" Lucy asked me. I looked up at her, eyes glittering.

"Just an idea I had. You'll see!" We all fell silent to listen as Erza found her friends on the beach.

Sho was serious about wanting to go and find his own way in the world. All three of them were. They had lived in someone else's shadow and wanted to find themselves. Simon was standing just behind Erza. He had chosen where he belonged a long time ago. I don't think any one of them were surprised by his decision. It would take a lot for Simon to ever be willing to let Erza out of his sight.

But not these three. These three had had blinders strapped onto them and now that they were free, they wanted to make the most of it.

"For those who wish to leave Fairy Tail, there are three rules which the must abide by!" Erza re-quipped into her ceremonial armor, the kind she only ever broke out when she was conducting the farewell ceremony.

"We never even joined your guild, what are-?" Wally was briskly stampeded over by Erza's sharp authoritative bark. Just like she did for any member of Fairy Tail who was trying to argue with her.

"First: You must never reveal any sensitive information about the guild, to anyone, for as long as you live!"

 _ **She is sad and proud to see them go.**_

 _Yeah...yeah, she would be proud._

"Second: Never contact any clients you worked for while in the guild for your own personal gain!" Sho, Wally and Milianna were confused still at the way Ezra was behaving, but they were starting to sense what exactly she was trying to say to them with this little charade.

I felt Erza's choke off a sob before she bravely continued, all of us exchanged a look, eager and ready to act when she gave the word...

"And third: Although our paths must stray, promise to live the rest of your lives to the fullest. That means, you must treat every day as though it were your last in this world!" Erza was crying now, tears rolling down her face as she completed the speaking portion of the ceremony.

"Never forget-" Erza's voice hitched with emotion."Never forget your Fairy Tail friends!" Her unspoken words echoed with all the force of a shout in my mind.

 _Don't forget about me-_

"Treasure them for as long as you live!"

 _Because I won't forget you!_

I didn't need to see the former slaves to know that all of them were tearing up.

Then Erza raised her flag and her voice:

"Let the Fairy Tail Farewell Ceremony begin now!"

Gray, Natsu and Lucy sent their fireworks up with their magic, ice blue, blazing crimson and star burst yellow, bidding farewell to the people they had befriended in the most unlikely of circumstances.

They had said their first goodbyes, then Natsu grinned down at me.

"You're up, Fae!" I tapped the end of my stick onto the ground.

" _Fly."_ My wings bloomed on my back, gleaming orange and amber, I had altered them to bird's wings and let them go as large and impressive as they wanted as I soared upward. I had a 12 foot wingspan that literally glowed against the dark sky. But I wasn't done yet. I grinned as I pronounced a new spell I had been working on for this occasion, hefting the stick I had attached the spell to.

" _Gandalf the Grey."_ The stick I held lengthened and seemed to age, twisting into a weathered staff that was about as long as I was tall. I gave it a wave.

Fireworks shot from the top of my stave as it passed through the air, lighting up the sky in a brilliant multitude of colors. Bird, butterflies and fairies soared and twisted through the air, made of colorful red, blue and lavender sparks. They scattered as a red and gold dragon materialized, roaring in a fiery voice. Trees bloomed and blossomed with flowers and leaves of every hue of green silver and gold imaginable. And smack in the middle of it all was the Fairy Tail symbol. Never let it be said I didn't have guild pride. It was a big, flashy light show that was gonna make me really tired.

 _Worth it._

The opened mouthed looks of wordless wonder on Wally, Sho and Millianna's faces resolved somewhat into shaky, tear filled grins when I flapped my wings once and soared up to dance among the blazing constructs, still clutching my staff and waving my goodbyes, grinning so wide it hurt my face.

 _So. Worth. It!_

"Come and see us soon!"

For all we had gotten off to a rough start, the experiences and memories made with these people here were pivotal and important ones. They'd helped me grow in ways I knew that I needed.

"May all your journeys bring you joy..." Erza whispered as we all stood together to watch the boat sail away... "I know we will meet again..."

Fairy Tail's Titania stood on the sand with the spray flecking her cloak, a smile on her face and cried as she watched her old life, the good and the bad, fade away.

Simon stood behind her, simply content to watch Erza with such a soft expression that I know Lucy definitely noticed. Her smile was soft, understanding and completely supportive.

 _ **Simza shipper gained.**_

For a change, I didn't tell that voice to shut up.


	15. Homecoming

_**The guild hall has been rebuilt.**_

I had gotten this notice about four days ago. In fact, this was what had woken me after I went to sleep to recover from my experiences in the tower.

I had captured Simon's hand and was handily towing him towards the brand new guild. Erza had made mention of her friend potentially needing a place to stay and, predictably, Makarov hadn't hesitated even for a moment before offering the guild's services.

"C'mon Simon! We gotta meet everyone!" I didn't even pause to gape up at the new, expanded building. I ran through the cafe, waving at whoever called after me.

I sensed a telepathic presence and idly gave Simon my attention. His voice sounded incredulous as he voiced his most pressing concern:

" _How are you doing this!? I'm four times your size!"_

" _I'm on a mission! Don't question me!"_ Everyone knows sheer grit makes up for any minor illusion of power difference! It was the rule Natsu lived by as a kid, and firmly believed in to this day despite being one of the stronger wizards among us.

"Heeeey! Master!" The small, elderly man looked around and a wide smile spread over his face.

"Ah, Fae-chan, so good to see you again! I take it everyone else made it back safely too?"

"Uh-huh!" I tugged Simon forward. "Master, this is Simon! He's one of Erza's friends from when she was little. He got injured years and years ago. When can Porlyusica see him and fix his face?"

"Now now child, slow down and let the poor man breathe. I have to talk things over with him a little before Porlyusica will see him. Now off you trot and say hello to everyone else. They're looking forward to seeing you again." Simon would be alright, despite some of the strange looks he was getting. I recognized the hint for what it was:

 _Friend or not, he did spend the past decade or so cooperating with the most dangerous criminal in Fiore._ The Rune Knights hadn't been too happy with letting Simon go, even with all the evidence in favor of his innocence. Jellal was nowhere to be found, and they had no one to blame for the coup of the century that had been going on right under their noses. The Magic Council had been played, and while there were several easy going wizards on it, none of them liked looking the fool. And that was exactly what Jellal had made them look like.

Simon would be OK though. Fairy Tail might be considered dangerous and unbalanced by some, but there were still more in our favor than against us,and we had gotten Simon out and free from his past.

"Mira!" The white haired Transformation mage welcomed me with a tight hug as I sprang over the bar to greet her.

"Fae, I'm so glad you're home! It's just not the same without you around."

"It was fun! Well, the fighting part wasn't, but the rest of it was OK! You didn't have any trouble keeping up with the bartending and so on did you? We've got a lot more tables to work over now."

This new guild hall was about three times the size of our old one. And judging by the people walking about on the second story, some rules had undergone a change or three as well.

"It was hard, but there's always someone ready to help out." Mirajane took my hand and led to to another row of tables. And right at the front was-

"My table!" Still covered with doodled runes and the occasional drop of spilled ink. My table sat at the front, old, weathered and familiar. Somehow, seeing it made me ridiculously happy.

"We left everything right where you put it." Mira explained as I looked on the underside to verify all of my materials were still there. "Though the master did want to talk to you about the prank curses on it for the unwary to come across. Warren was speaking in rhyme for three days." I giggled. _Yay! It worked!_

"How else am I supposed to get people to leave my stuff alone?" I paused for a second, thinking if I had left anything worse than that on there... _Nope, don't think so._

"He wasn't too mad, was he?"

"Warren? Maybe a little at first, but he laughed it off. He actually really got into it for open mic night. I think you'll have people asking for that spell when that rolls around again."

I frowned.

 _Well if that spells' no longer a deterrent, I guess I could dig out that body-swap curse that Team Natsu got slammed with... On second thought, that's a terrible idea._ Gray in Lucy's body was not, I repeat, not a good combination. Not that Loke and Natsu switching was ideal either... Honestly, I'd say that Erza and Happy was the least harmful of the bunch if it wouldn't make Erza mad. She had not been impressed with Happy fooling around with her magic and body. When it was her prerogative and when she could get something out of it, she had little issue with showing that she was a woman. It was something she was very proud of. But when someone else infringed on that right, then she got nasty.

"I know that look, Fae. Stop plotting about that, and get back to something less harmful, like flying!" _Ha!_

"Oh, right, Mira, I know how to do that now! Watch!" I made my preferred set of agility wings appear and zipped around the guild hall for a bit. It didn't take long for the laughter to start.

"Now we really do have a little fairy in our guild!"

"Best mascot ever!"

"I'm not a mascot Nab!" I snapped, flicking him on the nose before flitting up to inspect the upper story.

"Hi Elfman!"

"Fae! You can fly?!"

"Really? I hadn't noticed!"

"Fae, please refrain from flying when inside the guild hall." I pouted at Makarov and pulled out the Puppy Dog eyes.

I had long since figure out that if I focused on looking as cute and sad as I could, and then made sparkles appear around me, and my eyes look about twice as big as normal, people had a very hard time saying no to me.

"But master, I'll be really careful..."

He twitched noticeably, tried to look away, failed and twitched again. _Almost..._

"Pleeeaaase...?" He shook himself.

"Take it outside, if you must use it, child. I'm as glad as the rest of us that you've finally achieved your goal, but the risk is too great of you running into a wall in here. That's my final word on the matter!"

I put on my best kicked puppy face and snickered a little when many of the mages below gave Makarov a dirty look. _Darn, Cute Charm still needs some work._ I dropped all pretense of being upset as my next impulse came and I followed it!

"Ok, Master." I dismissed my wings as I climbed onto the railing and started to walk towards the stairs.

"Fae-! Oh never mind." I gave the exasperated, but amused Master a cheeky grin and a peace sign before I slid on the polished railing down to the first floor.

"You'll be the death of me, girl..."

"Sorry master, the alcohol has got too much of a head start. I'll never catch up!"

"Cheeky brat!"

-vVv-

I went around exploring my new playground for a bit, including the game room downstairs. When I came back up, Juvia was being presented as Fairy Tail's newest member. What caught my gaze was the scowling dark haired, piercing riddled man who was doing his best to glare everyone into submission.

' _ **Black Steel' Gajeel. Iron Dragon Slayer, double agent to Raven Tail at Makarov's behest.**_

I paused after reading that...

 _I think I just did an oopsie into another one of those things that the master would rather I not know about...Oh well._ Not like I could just forget it now. But still. I looked at the intimidating fellow and didn't feel that threatened by him. Maybe he was like Laxus in that he didn't believe in going after kids or something.

Still, best to get a personal feel for the guy.

"Who're you?" I asked, trotting up to him with absolutely no fear. He glared at me through legit red eyes. _Cool..._

"Who's asking, brat?" He was talking in a tone that was begging for someone to punch him so he'd have an excuse to fight. I just gave him a sunny smile.

"Faerun D. Celeste, but everyone calls me Fae."

"Little shrimpy to be a wizard, ain'tcha?" he asked, leering down at me.

 _ **He doesn't know what to make of you.**_

"Lots of people think the same thing about the Master." I replied blandly, knowing Gajeel knew fully well just how 'shrimpy' our guild master was in reality.

"He can back it up."

"You're assuming that I can't." This got him to assume a flat, somewhat disbelieving expression.

"Kid, I could eat you."

"I wouldn't. I'm told kids have too many little bones to make it worthwhile." We held out in an intense staring contest for a little while. One I absolutely refused to lose.

Gajeel was a Dragon Slayer like Natsu, the only difference was that he was a little older and more inclined to go with his darker instincts. No Dragon Slayer could respect someone who didn't at least stand up for themselves, and I didn't like backing down from a challenge anyways.

Gajeel wavered first.

"Tch. You're a mouthy one, brat." I reached up and tugged on one of his pierced earlobes, just a little tweak.

"Only people I know get to call me brat and you still haven't told me your name."

"Watch it kid!" He snarled. He swatted my hand away, not too roughly though, and picked my up by the back of my shirt, glaring at me. _Really is a pity he can't learn petrification magic, he'd be a natural._ I think he was expecting me to kick or struggle, but I just hung there like a strange doll, still staring at him.

I knew he wasn't gonna hurt me, he was just throwing something down to see how I'd react. A test of sorts. And I had a thing about not failing tests when they were presented... _I blame Freed._

We stayed like this for another moment, I was aware of many people looking at Gajeel very closely. But I got the impression that he wasn't even noticing them. He really didn't care right now. He was just trying to make me back down.

 _You got no ground to stand on, buddy._ I thought, keeping my face set in as close to a neutral deadpan as I could. _You aren't gonna hurt me, and I'm not gonna give in until I get your name, So long as you've got that mark, you're part of my family whether you like it or not._

I sensed the instant Gajeel decided to tolerate me. Of course, being who he was, he didn't set me down, he just dropped me. I bounced, unable to fight back my smile because I had won.

"You've got guts for all that you're a pipsqueak." Gajeel's hand extended with a toothy grin. "Name's Gajeel, kid."

I shook his hand, very aware of how loosely he was holding it to not use his massive strength to hurt me.

"Nice to meet you!"

-vVv-

Levy stared at Fae in avid shock as she got the intimidating, angry looking Dragon Slayer to crack a smile. It was the first time she had seen anything other than a frown, scowl or glare on his face.

She had been a little worried about the master bringing in Gajeel. He was a former enemy, the person who had destroyed their old guild hall and beaten her, Jet and Droy severely. Levy was honestly scared of the guy. He didn't look as if he ever smiled.

But Fae, little, fearless Fae, had just walked up to him as if none of that mattered.

 _Well, she's never met him and he didn't do anything to her, so I guess it's really not out of character..._

It had still been a very tense moment when Gajeel and hefted the girl off her feet and into the air. Gajeel's fearsome and well earned reputation aside, every mage in the hall had been ready to pounce on the man in an instant the moment Fae showed any sign of discomfort.

But the girl just kept right on staring at the big guy until he cracked. He conceded their silent contest to her and shook her hand. The first genuine greeting short of a grunt and a scowl that anyone had gotten.

 _Leave it to Fae, I guess._ Levy was privately very glad that Fae had handled that so well. Had she gotten scared, everyone would probably have tried to intervene to protect her and that would have gotten ugly fast.

But with that, the mood was defused and everyone was returning to their drinks and conversations. It was just Fae doing her usual thing. Not even Laxus could resist her.

 _Actually, because she did that, it'll probably go along way to smoothing over the bad blood anyone might still have against him._

If Gajeel could be that gentle with Fae, comparatively speaking, then Levy felt she couldn't do anything less than give the guy a chance herself.

 _After all, she was the first one to just treat him normally. Maybe the rest of us would have gotten something similar from him if we hadn't treated him like a stranger and enemy._

"Levy! I got this new idea while we were away! Come on, I need your help!" Fae's pale blue eyes glittered with happiness as she dragged the Solid Script Mage up to her table where she had already turned the formerly clean slate into a mess of papers and notes.

 _Business as usual for you, huh Fae?_

-vVv-

Gajeel's Welcoming Brawl was what really broke the ice. It was hard to still be standoffish to a guy when he apparently liked dressing in white suits and playing the guitar and singing. Some people liked it, others didn't. Gajeel didn't give a damn either way as to what they thought, and he defended his hobby with his fists. Though not as harshly as he might have.

From under my reinforced table, I saw him pull a lot of punches when he fought. Something I was pretty sure he wouldn't have done only a few weeks ago.

 _He must really have had it rough after Phantom Lord went under._

I reached for some extra information and...

 _ **No one wanted to hire Gajeel to do any work without a guild backing him and, more importantly, keeping him in line.**_ I also saw him sitting in the ruins of the Jupiter Giant that had been fished out of the ocean and dumped in a junkyard somewhere. Apparently, Gajeel hadn't lost a fight until Natsu beat his face in, so he was pretty depressed and even grumpier than usual at the time. Master had come then and pulled him out of his funk by offering him a job, and what's more, a home. It meant living by some rules, but it was better than starving alone because no one would give him anything. I wasn't that surprised that people wanted to know that there would be someone strong enough to keep him in check. That had once been Jose.

Our guild's old rival had a reputation for madness too, just not on the same scale as Fairy Tail. Which was really quite sad considering we had just over 100 members while they had had more than 700, and we still were ranked consistently higher in all aspects.

Losing to Fairy Tail must have been an enormous blow to his pride. For someone who thrived on combat as much as Gajeel, that would have almost destroyed him. If Juvia and master Makarov hadn't sought him out, Gajeel would probably have stayed in that scrapyard and been bitter about his defeat instead of getting up and moving on.

Hardship could do some strange things to a guy. It certainly looked like it had made Gajeel remember he had a heart inside that armor of his. And while his heart certainly wasn't made of gold, it was still there. He wasn't fully committed to the idea of what being a member of Fairy Tail meant just yet...but he'd get there. It might take a little while, but Gajeel would settle into his place with us here eventually.

 _Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated._

-vVv-

Simon took the mark on the left side of his collarbone in dark red. I noted, with some stifled giggles, that it was the exact same color as Erza's hair. He wouldn't be taking jobs for a while, even after Porlyusica fixed him up. It was going to take a while for him to get used to having functioning depth perception and being able to talk normally again. I was told by Erza that it took a little effort to figure out not not having an eye, and then going back to two again was even worse. It would probably take about a month before Simon was in any condition to take jobs as a full member.

Over the next few days, Levy helped me work out how to have some of my simpler enhancements ready to pull out at the drop of a hat. She suggested that I get a bracelet or an armband to write the stuff on so I could activate it whenever I needed. Apparently, it was a fairly standard tool for beginning rune wizards.

"Since you've pretty much got your basics down, the next step will be to get really good and fast at writing and activating them." She said, offering me a sleeve of sorts that was meant to go over my index finger, secured with a band around my wrist. I touched it and read it's purpose.

This tool held several focusing and safety runes. They were mostly meant to amplify weaker magic. It basically let me push my magic through it and it would refine it for more effective use. Like squeezing icing through a metal tip.

" _She's progressing well, but the Thunder Legion is taking some jobs that will make it so we won't be in town for a few months. I'm counting on you, Levy Mcgarden, don't give this to her unless she's gotten to the point where she needs it to keep getting better!"_ Freed's voice, somehow conveying worry, trust, pride and his usual slightly aloof attitude as he spoke to Levy, was familiar and made me smile.

 _Miss you._ I thought fondly. _Come back soon, Freed-sensei._ Aloud, I asked a clarifying question even as I took the strange accessory and put it on.

"So this is supposed to help me figure out how to focus my magic on my own?" The blue haired bookworm smiled.

"Yup! I used something like this when I was just starting out too. I eventually learned how to control my output manually and here I am!" I slipped it on and focused a little, starting to trace a line in the air.

A faint amber streak following my finger, and unlike a light pen, this was made of my own magic. Though without any real intent behind what I was doing, the line soon faded.

"Do I have to write everything out, or...?"

"Just stuff you're not as familiar with. Magic is all about intent. And Runes take it a step further with what each different word can mean to you. Concepts and meanings that are especially strong or relevant will always come easier. Thing is, the stuff that is harder to grasp is usually the gritty stuff that can really pull you or your team out of the fire. So no slacking off!" Levy shook a playfully scolding finger under my nose. "Freed gave this to me to pass on to you in case he couldn't make it back by the time you were ready. Don't go discrediting me to him by messing around, you hear?" I gave her as innocent a look as I possibly could.

"Levy, would I ever...?"

"Fae, that look only works on the guys." I giggled and pointed behind her to where her fanboys usually waited.

"I know."

Jet and Droy grabbed me in enthusiastic hugs.

"Fae's so cute when she's learning from Levy!"

"You're gonna be an amazing wizard, Fae-chan! Just you wait! We'll always have room for you on Shadowgear!" I counted myself and the pair of wizards lucky that Natsu wasn't here to object to the implication that I would automatically be joining Shadowgear because of my skill set. He had already picked out the first monster hunting job he wanted to take me on. Natsu was even more excited for me to grow up than I was!

"I'm glad, you guys, but I really want to start working with Natsu and the others like him. Just to get a feel for what combat jobs are like."

"So you're gonna go after Freed and become a front-line support?" A pathetically crying Jet and Droy made it hard to carry on a regular conversation with the very rational Levy. I squirmed slightly to keep meeting her eyes while I was mauled about.

"Definitely don't wanna keep doing intel jobs. It's good for my research skills-ow, Jet!- but I don't learn much about improv or real time problem solving."

"But-but Fae! All they know how to do is blow stuff up!"

"And it's a valid solution! Guys let go- Oh for- _Relashio!"_ I managed to twist my wrist enough to move my new tool and write the script in the air. The spell would normally just have made them loosen their grips enough to let me slide free. This time, it threw them out and back, making them let me go entirely. And it didn't do it gently either. The pair crashed into the tables on either side of our little group with audible thuds and appeared to be knocked out.

"Oh crap! I'm sorry, Jet! Are you ok, Droy?" Wakaba laughed just behind me, having only just managed to sidestep Droy as he flew past. He checked them with a few practiced motions.

"Eh, they're fine, Fae. Just goes to show they shouldn't manhandle you like that anymore. You're a big girl, you can make up your own mind about things." The Smoke Mage chuckled, lighting up a freshly filled pipe as he continued on his way.

Levy checked her teammates and would-be suitor's eyes and giggled.

"Like he said, they're fine. Just knocked a little sillier than normal."

"But I didn't mean to make it that strong..." I looked at the fingertip which the rune had come from warily. _This could be a problem..._ It being Fairy Tail, physical violence was almost a love language among us, but I didn't really want to hurt anyone..

"That'll happen a lot at first." Levy assured me. "It's like when you condense anything pressurized down to a smaller point: It'll have a much stronger kick!"

-vVv-

I had never realized just how much having a focus item could change how my spells worked. My next oopsie was using a ' _Scourgify'_ to clean the bartop and ending up sanding part of it smooth! This put me out in my tiny little 'practice range' to get a feel for how my new toy changed how my spells worked. It only took me a few days to figure out how this changed my output before I had it down.

(Not that that was all bad. If I was stressed, I could still turn mugs into nasty projectile weapons with overpowered Banishing Charms. And I had a perfect excuse to claim it was an accident!)

With that out of the way, I set to making a few more lasting combat enchantments to carry around with me constantly. And maybe being kidnapped had made me a teeny, tiny bit paranoid but... Well, no one was stopping me, at least! Though that might only be because Freed and Mystogan weren't here...

I only had a few that I was confident enough to work with, and some that I point blank refused to be without. I had my flight and super-jump runes, as well as my safety charms against falling, and a focusing agent for my Harry Potter spells. The bracelet Levy had recommended had eventually evolved into a solid leather bracer studded with tiny shards of lacrima. Smaller bracelets just couldn't hold up the the enchantments. Or at least, the enchantments when applied with my rather inexperienced hand. So on the one hand I had flight, freerunning with little regard for gravity and general scorn for falling damage, and on the other, the magical focus from Levy.

The best way of getting the bracer to hold onto the runes though would probably be by carving it right into the magical crystal...Which in and of itself was a tedious and potentially dangerous job. And expensive to boot since I needed unworked lacrima...

I had to reminded myself every now and then that the focus was a training tool and not a permanent fixture. The idea was to be able to have enough control of my magic that I could get it down to at least this level of control au natural.

-vVv-

About two weeks after our return from the Tower of Heaven, I was working in the morning with Mirajane when Gajeel stalked in, heading for the request board. Jet and Droy stopped him along the way and asked something. There was aggression in their posture and I had a bad feeling... No words, nothing specific, just a really bad, ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The conversation was brief, and the two male members of Shadowgear left soon. Gajeel watched them through narrowed eyes for a bit before he left as well.

I just couldn't resist the chance to be nosy.

 _My curiosity is going to get me killed someday...but that day is not today. Let's go._

"Mira, can you watch things for a bit? I'll be back soon."

"Sure, Fae. Go ahead." She was balancing the weekly budget to account for the upcoming Fantasia Parade. This week was when the floats were being designed, so she had a lot more cash to work with than usual.

I went outside the guild hall and started following Gajeel, taking care to avoid being upwind. I had learned to never bet against Natsu's nose, and until I got proof otherwise, I was going to assume Gajeel had the same abilities.

Thing is, when Gajeel was going somewhere, he didn't waste any time. So I realized fairly quickly I wouldn't be able to keep up with him if I kept at it like this.

 _I could fly after him...but that's kinda conspicuous. Same with the free running._

I reached into the past, focusing on Gajeel's recent history...

" _Meet us in South Gate Park, we got some business to talk over."_

That was Jet's voice.

Jet's voice in Gajeel's past, ergo that must be where they were meeting him.

I let my wings come out and take to the sky, carefully heading in along an alternate path to reach the park. I settled in a lofty branch just as Team Shadowgear arrived. I whispered softly and whipped up some leaves as cover.

Master and Erza would both heartily disapprove of my using my magic to eavesdrop on the private business of my guildmates. But I couldn't shake this weird feeling...

"Guys, this isn't going to do any good." Levy was protesting, somewhat on the back foot in the face of how driven her partners looked. Usually, they were so wrapped up in trying to impress her that they caved at a word from her. Since she generally had the most common sense of the trio, this wasn't a bad thing at all. It was still more than a little weird that they weren't listening now.

"Levy, just because you're too nice to try and get in some payback doesn't mean we're willing to let this go." _Payback. Against Gajeel?_ I had heard that when he had been with Phantom Lord that he had attacked and beaten them rather badly. It had been what had driven the Master to declare all out war. But that was in the past, they were all recovered! Bringing it back now wouldn't do anything except create more bad blood!

I watched from my perch as Gajeel arrived. From the first moment that Jet attacked, I knew something was wrong.

Gajeel wasn't too badly hurt, he...he just wasn't fighting back.

That didn't fit with the guy who could pick a fight with Natsu and brawl him to a standstill. It didn't fit with Gajeel at all. He was just standing there and letting the undeniably weaker pair whale on him.

 _ **Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.**_

It was wrong on all levels. Jet and Droy were good people. Sure they were a little low in IQ and had next to no common sense. After all, they had both been wooing Levy for years and they still didn't realize she wasn't interested. But this...this irrational, blind fury wasn't like them. They were brave. They were better than this.

Gajeel had made mistakes, he'd be the first to say so. But it wasn't their place to try and punish him for that.

I bit my lip and tried not to cry as I watched people I considered family change into something I didn't know...

And that was all before Laxus showed up.

-vVv-

Gajeel knew that if he did anything in answer to the beating the two weaklings were dishing out, he'd only make the whole problem worse. So he didn't do anything. He just took it and let them bleed out that anger they felt towards him. He deserved it and this was the only way anything would ever get better. He had been a cruel asshole to all three of them the last time they had met.

 _Just hurry up and get it over with._ He grumbled internally. They might rough him up a bit, but there was iron in his soul as surely as there was in his skin. It would take a lot more than these two to really hurt him. But he had a job to go do, and he didn't want him humoring their need to express some rage to make him late.

But the big blond guy with the attitude even worse than his had been? Yeah, he could actually lay down the hurt. It was killing his instincts and pride to not fight back against this guy though. He didn't owe him any licks, just the other two. Well, three, but the little slip of a Script Mage looked like she was about to faint as she watched with horrified eyes.

But it wasn't those eyes that Gajeel was watching.

It was the pair of ethernano blue eyes that were peering out of the tree they were under.

The cheeky little fairy. A kid in every sense of the word except her attitude.

Faerun was weird, but she was also not about to be sorry for being who she was. He could respect that. She'd probably be interesting to fight once she got old enough that he wouldn't feel bad about hitting a kid.

He had noticed her watching him from the first instant that he arrived at the park. He had smelled her hiding out in the tree.

He wasn't a nice guy. But given the gossip he had overheard about just how things had gone down for the kid with that whole R-system crap...She didn't deserve to see her friends like this.

To survive hell only to find that it had followed her home.

But she wasn't crying. The the blue Script Mage was, even as she yelled at the blond asshole to stop.

 _Damn idiot!_ He felt the electric focus of the air change.

Gajeel's whole body tensed as he felt the air hum and crackle with power and he knew where the attack was being aimed.

Because it would have been the same place he'd have aimed it only a few weeks back.

He just had to get close enough to draw the lighting into him instead of letting it go on it's previous course. Absorbing electricity always hurt like hell, even when he turned his arm into an iron pillar to dull the nerves. He let the rest of the power ground out into the ground under his feet.

He met the blondie's eyes in an unwavering glare.

 _You got a problem with me, bastard, then you settle it with me. Leave other people out of it, got it?_

Laxus Dreyar sneered and turned to stalk away, clearly dismissing him and the three wizards who had been stunned into silence behind him. The dismissal got more of a reaction than the attack, his instincts demanded that he fight the challenger.

But...running only on instinct had gotten his ass kicked last time. He knew he needed to turn over a new leaf and use his head a little more. So he didn't chase after Dreyer.

"If you're done." He ground out, grappling with everything Metalicana had beaten into him to stay where he was. To not go after the arrogant, dangerous Lightning Wizard and do something he'd regret. He needed this job and to be in this guild. Going after people like he had before wasn't gonna fly. He was still too low on their food chain for that. "-I have work to do..."

He only made it out of the park before he stopped and leaned against a wall for a moment to pull himself together and force his limbs to stop twitching from taking that bolt for the girl.

Barely noticeable footsteps came from the direction of the park and he turned to throw a glare at whoever was coming on to see it was Fae, an expression of very unchildlike neutrality on her face.

He could smell that this girl wasn't normal. The damned fire eater was probably too used to her to notice it, but she smelled different somehow. He couldn't say how and it certainly didn't feel like a bad thing. Just...different.

She didn't say anything, and neither did he. Somehow, he got the feeling he didn't have to. There was fear in her smell, a tiny amount of it. But if she hadn't been afraid of him when they met, she certainly wouldn't be now.

No, it would be Dreyar that she was afraid of. Despite the fact that he knew she knew him and liked him even.

So, watching that little charade go down had been enough to put him above the lightning bastard in her estimation?

 _Weird kid._ Gajeel started walking towards the blacksmiths he had picked up a job for for the day. She followed him.

-vVv-

" _This place has gotten pathetic! When I take over Fairy Tail, there are gonna be some changes!"_ Laxus' voice still echoed in my head as I searched for some scraps of information in the past.

I knew Laxus had some kind of secret, but he had asked me to leave it alone. Now, though, seeing Laxus attack Levy just for asking him to stop hurting Gajeel had made me a lot less certain about whether or not I could trust him. There was something going on.

And from the way my magic kept on looping my thought process back to those rune traps I had seen Freed putting up last month, they had something to do with it.

Which meant Freed was in on whatever Laxus was planning.

There was a shadow hanging over Laxus that I wasn't entirely sure originated from him. It had covered the entire Thunder Legion; all of them were just being standoffish and distant with everyone else. Like they had been trying to keep people away on purpose.

 _It was supposed to be over..._ I thought a little mournfully. _It was supposed to be home, like it always is..._

I had to talk to Master about this. He had said to come to me with any unusual premonitions.

 _But...I haven't had one yet. This is just a hunch._

I rubbed my temples, trying to force those thoughts into order. Failing that, I'd rather they just shut up and let me work.

Eventually, once I started humming to drown out the rest of the world, I managed to get into it.

This half trance was a state in which part of my conscious and unconscious were working together, while the other half was observing to see what was happening. I think I had gotten this to work in such a way after I got frustrated and wanted to get a better idea of how I used my magic without thinking in order to make it easier to use deliberately.

My current project would have some clout to it once I got it working properly.

I was trying to recreate Gandalf's powers, scaled back to fit my age, of course, but the intent was still there.

Given the success of a quick knockoff spell based on Gandalf to get some banging fireworks, I was going a little further. It was partly as a tribute to Natsu since a lot of Gandalf's powers revolved around various forms of pyromancy. But I picked him mostly because Gandalf's magic was pretty similar to mine, in a way. It revolved around having and using a vast amount of knowledge. And it looked like I was going to be getting a whole lot of that just because of the most basic functions of my magic. But being able to connect everything that I had was something that I still needed a little help with, I was just a kid after all.

In addition to this, Gandalf was capable of using 'Words of Command' which, again, sounded a lot like the magic I already did. I said something with the intent, and the world obeyed. The connections ought to be enough to get an interesting reaction at the very least. _Hopefully a beard won't be necessary..._ Just the hat had been enough of a connection to use my Link spell, so...

"Taking up woodworking, Fae?" I hummed absently in response to the question, running a hand covered with the runes 'smooth', 'sandpaper' and 'preparation' over the length of a simple staff that would about be sized for me. Plus a little extra since I was going to be growing as well in the future.

The first two because splinters were a pain, literally, and the last because I wanted this to be as perfect a vessel for my magic as I could make it. I'd even gone out and hunted up a branch to keep anyone else's personal brand of Ethernano from touching it and potentially interfering with my spells.

"Fae?" A voice was trying to break through my focus, but only part of my brain caught onto this. I wanted to finish prepping this staff before I let myself get distracted. "Fae, your eyes-!"

"She's been doing that a lot lately. Some kind of meditation technique to let her stay focused. She'll come out when she's ready."

That was...that was Mirajane, of course. She was explaining to whoever was there my newest habit.

 _Almost got it perfect..._

Since Gandalf was exponentially more powerful after his resurrection, I was going with the way his original staff had looked. All wooden and weathered. It ought to take much less power that way. Also, I didn't want to give away any spoilers for the next book. But just because I was using a worn-looking staff didn't mean that I was gonna take any chances! Splinters, blisters, nicks, scratches, gouges, I didn't want any part of that!

Someone shook my shoulder gently.

"Faerun..." The voice was soft and a little teasing. "I believe you owe me a hug."

 _Who is that?_

Soft and teasing. Well the teasing could come from just about anyone. But not many people did 'soft' in this guild. Not like that.

I ran my fingertips along the length of the staff, checking for any flaws.

 _The runes will be curved slightly due to the surface not being perfectly flat. Application will have to be done with immense care._

But I was satisfied with the extent of my labors so I started to come out of my little trance. The amber withdrew from my eyes and I finally looked up to see who was trying to talk to me.

"Freed-sensei!" I promptly glomped him, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

"What trouble have you been getting yourself into now? You didn't seem to hear me at all."

"I totally heard you, I just didn't want to stop until I was finished!" He laughed, shaking his head in exasperation as he clasped my hand in his and pulled me towards the door of the guild hall.

"With what precisely? Tell me everything."


	16. The Fall Festival

Freed's hand was shaking as he put up the last of the runes around the guild hall. These would be the linchpin in the entire network of runes he had erected for Laxus's plan to cleanse Fairy Tail.

Seeing Fae again had rattled him more than he'd expected. He'd managed to avoid thinking about how much Laxus' plan would hurt her, to convince himself it was the right thing for the guild, but it was obvious, really, what she'd think.

 _They're her family._

Fae regarded everyone in Fairy Tail as her family. The only family she had in the world.

Freed was only that close to the other members of the Thunder Legion, Laxus and Fae herself. In all of this, he had been carefully deluding himself into forgetting that this plan wouldn't just hurt Fae, it would destroy her. She had no real concept of how powerful or useful the various mages in the guild were. Rather, she didn't care. She was a child, to her, all of them were powerful. All of them were important to her.

The guilt wracked Rune Wizard hesitated.

 _All of them._

There was no way this could end without Fae getting hurt.

Just imagining her hurt, betrayed expression was enough for his focus to waver and the runes he had written to fade, useless now that they hadn't been linked into the entire working.

 _Is...is there really no other way...?_

He had sworn that he would assist Laxus in his ambition to restore the guild to it's rightful place. But how could he do that if it meant Fae would lose any and all trust she had in him? The thought of losing that was crippling in its intensity. As was the sensation of being completely trapped.

He had no options...he had gone too far to back out on Laxus now, but he wouldn't be able to look Fae in the eye if he kept at this.

 _They won't die._ He justified to himself. He tried to keep moving, keep working. _Nothing will change, they'll still be there._

A small voice in his mind called him a liar. This would change everything. It was meant to change what was happening and it would. Events were already in motion to ensure that.

"Freed?" Laxus' voice made the green haired young man flinch slightly. "What's up?"

"N-nothing." The taller wizard gave him a flat look.

"C'mon, I don't need to be the squirt to know you're lying." _Fae is exactly the problem here._ Laxus actually looked a little thoughtful. "Kinda surprised she didn't jump on me soon as she knew I was coming. She's got a knack for that..."

"Ah...she was using a meditative technique to tune out distractions in order to work on a new spell." Freed's heart stuttered a tiny bit at the grin that spread across the Lightning Wizard's face.

"That kid never stops working." He certainly sounded as though he approved. He looked at the runes that still hovered in the air in the doorway, a tiny frown on his face. "She's gonna be right in the middle of all this..." For a moment, Freed was hopeful. Hopeful that Laxus would tell him that everything was off and they wouldn't go through with this. That he'd be out of this obligation without needing to hurt his apprentice...

"Put up some extra wards." Laxus said finally. "No matter what happens to the rest of the barriers, Fae doesn't leave the hall. She'll get flattened if she gets caught up in the fighting."

"Right away..."

Freed was glad that Laxus couldn't read his wards and simply trusted him, since those had actually been the first wards he set up. Once everything was active, no one under the age of twelve would be able to leave the guildhall. And that rule was completely separate from the other wards. It would have to be taken down separately. He was layering them so hopefully, Fae wouldn't find the runes and would stay safe for as long as possible. Freed was not an idiot, unlike most of the rest of the guild. He knew that there would be some people who wouldn't rush out and would stay inside and work out someway to break the barrier that was keeping the Master trapped inside and unable to interfere.

Actually, Fae would be foremost among them.

And she was familiar with his personal style of runes, and her magic was practically made for breaking down enchantments or wards. This one feature of her gifts which he was always so proud of could very well make it so that no matter what he did, she would get out somehow. Thus if she was caught inside the guild hall, he was running the risk of everything being taken apart much faster that he anticipated.

 _She's already progressed much faster than I thought. This could..._

He'd have to put still more enchantments to make sure that Fae would stay well out of the fight. More things for her to work through. It wouldn't take long for the rest of the rabble to break themselves against one another. Then he could come back and let her out and pray that she wouldn't hate him...too much.

 _I'm sorry, Fae...I'm so sorry. Please forgive me..._

Freed hadn't been too eager to teach her when the master had asked him to take a hand at first. It was an orphaned foundling who appeared to have some kind of magic. It had hardly seemed worth the bother of needing to break off of missions and return to the guild on a semi regular basis.

And now, two years later, he had a beautiful little student who admired him and looked up to him. _Loved him._ A girl who he adored in turn, who was a constant source of delight and pride with each new horizon she broke in her unique way. Freed would say without reservation, or shame, that he adored his apprentice.

(Some people, mostly Bickslow, had remarked that given their similar hair color and abilities, they might very well be related somehow.)

As her master, mentor, teacher and friend, it was his duty to see to it that she learned only the very best, explored without coming to harm and made the most of her life.

Freed kept working, trying to ignore the growing sensation that he was sacrificing something that was worth far more than his loyalty to Laxus.

-vVv-

The Harvest Festival was a big event for Magnolia. And it was always enormous fun for all people involved. It began on October 15th and lasted a whole week, There were games, booths, a fair for merchants to display their wares, and of course, the Fantasia Parade that Fairy Tail put on every year.

Everyone in the guild was busy preparing for the parade and there were already people piling in to get a seat for the Miss Fairy Tail contest.

"I still think you should enter the contest, Fae. You're really popular all things told." Mira said, running a brush carefully through my hair.

"It's not really my thing." The contest was an easy way to generate revenue with very little effort on the guild's part. Not only did the onlookers pay a few jewels to attend, but contestants paid too, albeit not much, and it all contributed to the whole pot. The 500,000 jewel reward offered for contestants was only about half of the money that it brought in all told. And that was in the smaller guild hall too.

"Aw, are you sure? I know I heard a lot of people out there who would vote for you...~!"

"Mira, don't be silly. The people who come to pay to watch the contest are older guys. They're not interested in seeing a kid when they can see you guys." _Fan service. Fan service everywhere._ Mira bopped me lightly on the head with the brush.

"You're too young to be thinking like that! Cleanse your mind of such thoughts!" I threw her a flat look over my shoulder. With magic like mine, getting something out of my head was far easier said than done.

She had insisted on dolling me up for the day. To put it briefly, I now looked the part people had always jokingly assigned me. Mira had somehow gotten her hands on an orange and green fairy costume. My skirt was a mixture of orange, yellow and green maple leaves, and the green gossamer shirt featured a small shoulder cape in dark amber. It was pretty...but the skirt was also somewhat uncomfortable to wear. Ever since I'd started flying, I was very aware of the air around me, and autumn was a traditionally blustery season in Magnolia. Not to mention that skirts and flying had the potential to be a rather embarrassing combination... I was definitely going to have to insist on a pair of pants under the skirt.

Something was odd though. Mira liked playing dress up with me sometimes, and I was OK with it. It was how we bonded, really. But she normally wouldn't push my comfort zone this much...

I checked her past a little bit, feeling for something that felt like this situation, to know why I was even being put through this.

I caught a glimpse of Mira going to sign up for the contest, and filling out _two_ participation slips.

... _It's too late. She's already gotten me in._

I didn't even need magic to state her motive.

"You just don't want Erza to win again."

"Come on Fae!" She said in a tone that sounded only slightly too bright and cheerful as she pushed me out of the room and started hauling me to the guild hall. "I've already paid your fee and everything! All you gotta do is show up and be your usual cute self and she loses- I mean, you win!"

"Miraaaaa!"

-vVv-

I got a lot, and I mean a lot of compliments as we walked to the guild hall. Mira had entered the contest, but I don't think she was doing much more than a token appearance.

"You're mean, Mira. I don't wanna be in the contest! And this damn skirt really breezy-!" She flicked me on the forehead.

"Mind your language, Fae. I know it's probably hard to hang around Gray and Natsu without picking up some of their habits, but you can't go cursing like they do."

"I'm serious! I feel like pedophile bait in this thing!" The mixed green and orange costume was reminiscent of leaves changing their colors for the seasons. I liked it...but I would have liked it more if I hadn't been forced to wear it.

"If you're that uncomfortable, then why don't you modify it?"

"Shouldn't changing out of it be an option?"

"Nope! You're already signed up, there's no getting out of it!"

"You're evil..."

"She-devil~!"

I eventually fell silent as we wound our way through the streets. I was thinking fiercely about the anticipation in the air. It wasn't the happy light hearted stuff that I had always felt when coming into the festival, or at least not just that, there was something a little darker underneath it and it was being slippery...

"Aww, it's Faerun!"

"She's adorable!"

"Like a real life fairy!" Mira lapped up the praise as if it was her they were complimenting.

"Thank you! If you want to show your support, come and vote for Fae at the Miss Fairy Tail contest!" There came an eager blend of babble at this pronouncement and I sensed a lot of energy. Mostly I saw a lot of girls and kids my age and younger looking at me with wide eyes, smiling and waving.

 _ **Many of them admire you.**_ I may not have been a registered wizard, but I was still a wizard. A kid who was running with the top guild in the country as one of them and not a mascot. Not a bystander, but a member. It gave them a little hope, made them dare to dream of reaching out for a little more. The sincerity and joy made me blush quite a bit and I managed to wave at some of the younger crowd with almost no hesitation.

Both young and old seemed to like that as a new surge of excited chatter swept over us. I caught plenty of people looking at Mira, and at me. I had gotten used to being stared at for story night, but this was a new kind of uncomfortable.

"How do you stand people looking at you like that?" I asked my companion, keeping hold of her hand. "It feels like they want to eat you." _Or, it feels like they're_ _going_ _to eat me!_

"I just think of who I represent and who's got my back." The She-devil said cheerfully. "I may not be much in a fight anymore, but there are a lot of people I know that are. And anything that tries to take a bite out of me will end up with a little more than they can swallow."

That was certainly true. Jellal, and whoever had been puppeteering him, had learned that lesson first hand. His first mistake was trying to make Erza the victim. His last was not figuring out how to stop his plans from imploding once Fairy Tail came back in full force to rescue us. (Since it hadn't been his idea to abduct me, I wasn't going to lay that one at his feet. That was mostly on Wally and his friends.)

Just thinking about it made bearing the stares a little easier. They were just looking, there literally was nothing they were doing that was hurting me in anyway! And if they did on accident, then it was an accident. If it was on purpose, then...well... I had a lot of ways to blow something up with the brainstorming I had done to make Gandalf's staff. And for anything I missed, I knew a couple people who would be willing to help.

With that new confidence, I could stand up to my admittedly not impressive height beside Mirajane, and walk like I had something to show. With my nerves out of the way, moving with a spring to my step was a far cry easier. The energy and excitement was high with anticipation and all dark shadows had flown the coop.

"That's it, Fae! We'll make a model of you yet!"

"No thank you..." I muttered. _Freed's gonna flip..._ This would definitely qualify as indecent in his mind. Not the attention, but the outfit. And while I all but knew he was gay for Laxus, he was always in attendance for this contest...

Now there was a thought. Since I'd decided to enjoy the contest, I may as well point out that little detail to Mira. She was clearly anticipating pitting me against Erza in the contest and had a wicked little smirk on her face. _Time to bust her bubble. Petty vengeance is mine!_

"You're dealing with Freed." The Rune Mage would not be happy with my outfit, no matter how willing I had been. Mira would no doubt be fine, but the tantrum he would throw would be entertaining nonetheless.

Her smile faltered for a split second before returning.

"Worth it!"

-vVv-

Getting through the crowd and entering the guild hall was tough going. But once Mira said why I had to get back there, a path cleared soon enough. Actually, Macao swept me up on his shoulders and carried me there as the people started to get a little more thickly packed.

"Fae? You're competing too?" Lucy blinked up at me in her blue cheerleader's outfit. "You look really cute in that!" I smiled back at her from my perch.

"Thanks, but I can't take any credit. Mira set me up. I'd really rather be in the audience."

Macao laughed as he swung me down once we were through the worst of the tangle of people.

"Not this time, kid. Looks like Mira's got you set up to steal the show today." He ruffled my hair. "Good luck! You definitely got my vote for today!" He then disappeared, no doubt to find Romeo. This left me with Lucy as we started to work our way towards the back of the crowd and the stage we'd be performing on.

"Macao's right. I figured this wasn't your thing." Lucy looked over my outfit again before grinning. "But seriously, you look amazing! You're going for a literal 'fairy' theme there." I shrugged, plucking at the gauzy orange and brown leaves that edged my skirt.

"It does look nice, but it's a little more than I'd usually wear." I liked plain pants with lots of pockets, short sleeves and sturdy shoes. Stuff that was comfortable and easy to move around in. I looked at my skirt and half exposed shoulders. "Or rather, a little less." Hence why Freed would flip out. Living with Evergreen in general made his stress levels climb through the roof.

 _ **Freed actually only pretends to be uncomfortable. He likes it.**_

 _I knew he wasn't completely gay!_

"Well, between you and Mira I can kiss my chances of winning goodbye then." Lucy sighed. "That sucks, the prize money would have paid my rent for months!"

"I can't argue with you on the winning part but I don't think it's gonna be Mira you have a problem with." I inspected my rune bracer and focus tool, fidgeting with them slightly. "See, for the last five years, it's been Erza who wins this thing by a landslide."

"She's in this too!?" Lucy yelped, looking distraught at the news. "I thought for sure this wouldn't be the kind of thing she'd get involved in!"

"Nope, she's been in this as often as Mira. They first did it together on a dare and it brought in so much revenue and good publicity they decided to keep it up. And Erza's got a whole bunch of storage she's got to maintain to keep her different suits of armor in, so her rent is a pretty big deal even with the jobs she can take."

"But I thought she just carried it all around in her magic!"

"You've seen how much luggage she always takes with her and you assumed she can just put it all into hammerspace at the drop of a hat?"

"Well...I guess...Wait. what do you mean 'hammerspace'?"

"It's from my stories. Extra dimensional storage not linked to the limits of the physical container. Or something being bigger on the inside if that makes more sense." Lucy sighed, rubbing her forehead.

"Not really getting it, but I'm starting to get used to that, being in this guild." I giggled, grabbing her hand and towing her forward to where we could see what was going on on stage.

"Oh believe me! It's only gonna get worse!"

"I was afraid of that...How could anyone possibly think that it was a good idea to raise a kid in this place?"

"I don't know. I don't think I'm turning out too bad... Now, hush, they're starting!"

-vVv-

Cana was up first, using her magic to swap her clothes for a bikini. it was actually an impressive display of skill, since she didn't have Requip magic but had to copy it with her cards. In any case, she always got involved with this contest and she was rather popular.

 _ **It's a good way to get guys to buy her drinks.**_

Her motivation for participating wasn't just the prize money. Cana's bar tab was a truly monstrous thing to behold. Almost 60% of the booze the guild bought was drunk by Cana. Erza joined Lucy and I in the wings and gave her own commentary, wondering under her breathe if she shouldn't go for that angle as well.

"Erza, if you ended up in a bikini with that many people out there, you know they'd start up the petition for you to model for Sorcerer Weekly again." The famous Titania went rigid for a split second a look of stricken horror on her face...

"...right, of course. Definitely not doing that then," Most of the shares for the magazine were owned by Blue Pegasus. And that meant some of their wizards were always on security duty at their photo shoots. And if Erza was snagged into posing, you could bet Cana's bar tab Ichiya Kotobuki would be there. The short, ginger nightmare of the genepool was very charming in almost any situation despite his unfortunate appearance. But if Erza was involved... he jumped from a slightly over the top charmer to a straight up nightmare for any girl with more IQ than a chipmunk. Only the fact that Blue Pegasus Guild Master and Makarov were such good friends had made it so there hadn't been charges pressed for sexual harassment. The guy just didn't seem to get that he wasn't as good looking as he thought and that when a girl punched you through a wall, that was a fairly big indicator that she didn't want to be around you.

The one time Erza had participated in a photoshoot had been when she met Ichiya. She hadn't been the same since.

Lucy looked from me to Erza, somewhat confused.

"I'm definitely missing some part of this conversation here."

"Hopefully, we'll never need to explain." I said, patting Lucy's arm. Ichiya had once said that it was impossible for there to be an ugly woman, but that 'the true jewels of Fiore can be found in Fairy Tail'. He was a freaking nightmare for any mature female wizard. He was pretty much harmless, but a nightmare nonetheless.

Being so new to the guild, no one really expected what Juvia would do, but she was definitely popular going by the enthusiastic cheering. Luckily, the tidal wave she sent flying out retreated as swiftly as it came in a deft show of control and power. It left everyone in the audience completely dry and unaltered. Unfortunately, she had also fallen into the trap of sexualizing everything. Lucy was not amused. The crowd definitely was even though the only reason Juvia was posing like this was because Gray was out there.

 _Let's see..._ I peered around the side as Mira came out. Anticipation surged up as the famous model was recognized. I spotted Gray and Natsu sitting with Elfman, who had long since gotten over the mental stress of his sister being plastered in magazines across the country. Gray was talking to Natsu and hadn't appeared to have seen much of what Juvia was doing.

Mira did exactly as I expected of her.

She completely goofed off with her transformation magic. Her act here was mostly for the guild's entertainment. Lucy was more happy that Mirajane wasn't going to be posing as she usually did, but Erza and I were biting back laughter. It was freaking hilarious to see Gajeel's face speaking with Mira's voice! I could see that the Iron Dragon Slayer had done an epic spit take. The guild members were roaring with laughter even if the more perverted crowd was disappointed.

 _Mira's a model and there are plenty of cameras out there._ She was nothing if not business minded. If people wanted to see her in scanty attire, they would dang well have to pay for it!

"Well, looks like I'm up." Erza said, rising briskly and brushing off her skirt and standard armor.

"Good luck, Erza."

"Thank you, Fae." She rested her hand on my head briefly as she darted onto the stage to enormous applause.

"Wow, she's really popular..." Lucy remarked, slumping in depression. _Poor Lucy. No rent money from this thing._ I felt obligated to tell her something to make her understand and potentially cheer up.

"Given how Erza usually is, seeing her loosen up like this is a treat for everyone. It's rare enough that every time she does it, it feels like a brand new novelty."

"I guess that makes sense..."

Erza Re-quipped into a cute gothic lolita outfit that was met with roars of approval as she posed for a little bit before exiting the stage. She had gotten it in a set, and had given me a smaller one. I couldn't see Simon, but I could sense him in the crowd. _Hope you liked the show!_ I giggled a little mischievously.

"Please tell me Simon saw that..." Lucy hissed into my ear.

"Uh-huh! If he's not careful, Natsu's gonna go sniffing for the heat source." I answered, still giggling.

"Yessss...!"

Because Simon had loved Erza for who was long before she had grown into the gorgeous woman she was today, his reaction to the outfit didn't register as a ship update. And that was something I honestly thought was freaking adorable.

From my place of the side lines, I had a pretty good view of who was there. But I couldn't see Freed. I had mixed feelings about him not being there. On the one hand, he wouldn't be able to have an aneurysm over my outfit. On the other...

 _He's not here..._

"Now, returning to the stage not as a master storyteller, but as the Fairy Princess she is! Put your hands to together for: Celeste D. Faerun!"

 _I will get you for this Max._ I vowed even as I skipped out, putting on as close to a genuine smile as I could in the face of my disappointment. The roar of the crowd seemed to be about as enthusiastic for me as it had been for Erza and Mira. All of the shameless guild members were trying to raise the roof, hollering my name and cheering like lunatics.

"So whatcha gonna show us today, Fae?" I grinned.

"A new trick I learned a couple weeks back!" Lifting my arms and flicking my hand to send a long, thin line of script out and into the air I guided it to spin around me until it formed my usual dragonfly wings.

I kicked off and zipped into a figure eight in midair to enormous approval from the crowd. I zipped off of the stage and flew low over the crowd, creating glittering fairy dust in my wake, hand extended for several high-fives with audience members. Gray and Natsu were particularly exuberant, whooping, laughing and generally behaving like total morons.

"Way to go, Fae!"

"Show em what you got!"

I touched one of the minor illusion runes I had attached to my bracer, a one use thing since I was still lacking materials, and made about a dozen other smaller fairies zip into the air around me.

 ** _Think of the happiest things. It's the same as having wings!~_**

I let out a laugh before zipping back to the stage and posing one final time in midair, to a thunder of applause before curtsying to the crowd and gliding off stage.

And my scan of the hall confirmed what I had originally suspected. Freed wasn't here for my first public demonstration...

 _I suppose I can't blame anyone but myself. I didn't tell him that I was gonna be participating, after all. I didn't see that Mira was conniving to get me in._

Lucy was giving me a big thumbs up from off stage opposite us, grinning happily and mouthing 'great job'.

Erza was waiting for me, looking very amused, still clad in her own costume. The black and white outfit coupled with her long, ruby colored hair made for a striking combination.

"Very nicely done, Fae. Shall we go change?"

"Can't we wait for Lucy?" I dismissed my wings, knowing that I'd probably find some excuse to use magic later in the day. I wanted to save as much as I could.

 _ **Evergreen has arrived.**_

 _Oh...that's nice. Freed said she and Bickslow were gonna show up sometime today._ So why did this update give me this uncomfortable pins and needles sensation?

"Certainly. I must say, I am looking forward to seeing what she will come up with."

"She looks like a cheerleader and she had some pompoms on hand. I also saw her working out a little routine with a couple of her spirits when I held her hand earlier." further proof that there was no such thing as a real secret for me.

"Interesting."

Erza and I stood together as we watched Levy take the stage with her Solid Script producing a variety of objects, sights and sounds, all seemingly made of the very things they described. Jet and Droy shouted themselves hoarse to support her. _Hopeless..._

 _ **GaLe will triumph.**_ I resisted the urge to smack myself across the face.

 _Damnit, not another one! Where'd you come from anyway?_

The answer came in the form of showing Gajeel moving to defend Levy from Laxus's lightning bolt. Not hesitation, no flinching. Just a solid wall between her and the man who had attacked her out of the blue.

 _Oh...I suppose that makes a little sense...actually...no it doesn't, who am I kidding? She's still scared of him!_

 _ **GaLe will triumph.**_ The way it said this made it feel like time would go backwards before this changed.

 _OK, OK! I get the message!_

Bisca took the stage then, confidently demonstrating her Requip magic and her honestly somewhat scary accuracy. I think Alzack was drooling a little at what Bisca showed. His pining was getting kinda pathetic actually. I was just waiting for Bisca to stop being old fashioned and just propose to him herself. It wasn't likely that he would say anything, he was too shy.

"Lucy's next!" I said, bouncing a little on my heels. Erza's low laugh sounded behind me.

"I know Fae, just calm down and we'll see what's going to happen."

 _ **The previous contestants have all been petrified.**_

The words made my breath jerk out of my lungs in a gasp as part of the secret that Laxus had been keeping unraveled and I could see it all.

The plans to start the Battle of Fairy Tail, pitting friends against friends by holding the women hostage.

The dozens upon dozens of traps scattered around all traffic high areas of the city, tuned into the wizards of this guild. Designed to make it so only one of them could leave.

 _Survival of the fittest._

Betrayal, cold, keen and biting shot through my chest. For the first time in my memory, I was angry. Furious. Outraged. Sick with anger.

"Fae, what is it?" Erza had swiftly pulled me back, her hands resting on my shoulders as she looked at me with great concern. "You've gone dark, literally, what is it?"

Looking down, I saw the air around me had indeed darkened to a dark, angry red streaked with black.

"Evergreen turned the other girls to stone...!" I whispered, trembling with rage as I forced my visual display of emotion into dormancy once again. "Laxus is gonna try and take over the guild, he's holding them hostage to make everyone fight one another until Master steps down-"

" _WHAT!?_ " Suddenly my rage seemed pale and wan in comparison to the unholy wrath that tore across Erza's face. What made it all the more terrifying was that her whisper of a snarl impacted me with all the force of roar. It was accompanied by intense magical pressure that splintered some of the boards beneath her feet before Erza reined herself in.

"Fae, when is-" I felt her coming. Her intent solidifying into present purpose

" _Erza has to be taken out and put as a hostage. She's too much of a wildcard to let her stay free for any reason."_

Laxus's voice drifting through my magic from the past was the damning nail in the coffin. This had been what he was keeping from me. What I deliberately wasn't looking for! He had taken my trust and fried it to ash without even hesitating.

 _He will not get away with this._

My mind snapped to a cold, crystalline clarity. My gaze focused on Evergreen, who was approaching Erza as if nothing were wrong. _Traitor._ I automatically shifted my gaze to her collar, away from her eyes and magic.

 _Visual magic. Requires eye contact on both sides in order to take effect. Cut off even one side of it, and its effect is greatly reduced._

"Behind!" Erza was a professional in every sense of the word, so there was neither wasted movement or time as she reacted to my warning. In a smooth motion, she spun, re-quipping a heavy gauntlet on her hand as she was moving. Erza delivered a heavy sucker punch to the other woman's middle, forcing the breath from her lungs in a whoosh. But Evergreen wouldn't go down that easily and Erza would be at a disadvantage as long as she had to fight blinded.

 _Solution: Blind her._

My magic had been enough to do it before, and it would be enough now.

My hand was moving before I realized it, a familiar spell already coming to my lips in a low hiss that wouldn't be heard by anyone in the crowd.

" _Obscuro!"_ An amber rune flashed into being and a black blindfold flashed across our traitorous guildmate's deadly eyes, keeping Erza from being petrified and causing a squawk of surprise to emit from the would be attacker. Erza followed her initial attack up with another heavy blow, this one an uppercut to Evergreen's chin. This didn't knock her unconscious, to her credit, but it did lay her out for an instant and that gave me enough time to act again, pointing and snarling the incantation.

" _Silencio!"_ Before she could so much as emit a squeak, my magic slammed into her, it's power very much amplified both by the focusing tool I wore and my own anger. Her mouth was open and attempting to call, say something, anything. But not so much as a breath of noise emerged as a single orange rune floated before her mouth. Before even Erza could act, I picked up a spare coil of rope from the curtains and tossed it at Evergreen.

" _Incarcerous."_ If I didn't count on my magic to handle everything, I could expect a spell to last much longer. Only relying on the spell to tie her up effectively would go a long way towards extending its usefulness.

"Well done, Fae." Erza said coldly, she was in commander mode. "Now that that's taken care of: When was the plan supposed to kick off and who else is in on this?" I lifted a hand to my temple, closing my eyes as I searched...

"As soon as all hostages were secure. Besides Evergreen and Laxus, Bickslow and Freed are also involved." The last name made the glowing runes on the rope binding Evergreen flex a little tighter responding to my betrayed feelings. I got it back under control with a little effort. For all that she was doing this, I didn't want to hurt any of my guildmates.

And she was my guildmate. Which was exactly why I was so furious.

"You stay here and watch Evergreen. I must inform the Master. This has to be done discreetly. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am."

Erza slipped out from backstage even as Lucy did a cute little cheer with Virgo and Plue about Fairy Tail. The crowd was loving it, chanting the count along with her. I would have enjoyed this much more if this hadn't just happened.

I sensed Evergreen was ranging somewhere between irritated at having been caught and foiled so easily and slightly wary of the cold hardness in Erza's tone. Not even facing Phantom Lord had made her sound like this. But this was far more close to home than Phantom Lord, their attack notwithstanding.

I glanced down at the bound, gagged and blinded woman before deciding another measure of security was needed. Once Erza walked away, I crouched and held my hand over her head.

" _Slytha."_ Evergreen was very good at what she did. She was easily one of the more cunning members of the Thunder Legion even if her ego tended to negate whatever advantage this gave her. I wasn't about to run the risk her pulling off a spell to free herself even while she was mute and blind.

She dropped off to sleep with some resistance, but not nearly as much as if she had seen what I had been doing and known what was coming.

I just stayed there, shaking slightly and trying to keep my burning anger from enveloping my magic. I had been warned multiple times about what could happen if I let my anger control my magic instead of my desire to simply _be_.

I'd been scared at the Tower of Heaven, and that resulting surge of extra power had helped me get to help so I could get out alive.

I wasn't scared right now.

I was furious.

If I let my anger control how I used my magic, then I would hurt someone.

"Fae it actually went- Ohmygosh! Fae!" Lucy had finished and Max was closing out the contest and dispersing the crowd to go and enjoy the festival. Votes would be tallied in two hours. I was turning my attention away from my anger and searching for the entirety of the plan. Everything that had been set up in preparation for it. The whole city spread out in my mind's eye, each trap marked and plain to be seen.

The Celestial Spirit Mage had her hand on my shoulder, eyes wide and very confused.

"Fae, what's going on?"

"We're at war again, Lucy." I said, my voice flat and dead. "But this time, our enemies are inside the guild."

 _My family...Laxus...what are you doing my family? What did we ever do to you?_


	17. Betrayal

There was a very clear and plain tension in the air as people hurried the civilians out of the hall and met in the strategic council to figure out how to handle this without putting the citizens at risk.

I was still trying to comprehend and cope with the fact that people I trusted and cared about were doing this to me, to my family, and fighting to keep my magic from producing some less than friendly illusions. Erza, Lucy and I were the only contestants who hadn't been petrified.

 _ **Laxus knows you're free.**_

I shifted for a moment, slightly bewildered. How could he have known? Clairvoyance wasn't one of his gifts...

 _ **Bickslow.**_ Of course...

 _Bickslow can see through his doll's eyes. In a fight, this makes it really hard to land a hit on him since he's always got multiple viewpoints. One of his dolls can always see something._

We still hadn't gotten past the shouting confusion before Laxus appeared and laid out his proposed 'game'.

As I had seen, everyone would be participating in an elimination style tournament. Once two or more people stepped into an activated rune circle, they wouldn't be allowed to leave until one of them was unconscious. Once one person lost a fight, they were out of the game. And the only way of taking out one of our wizards was to put them down and put them down hard.

No one was happy with about this situation, or with our odds, but Makarov was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Trying again and again to reason with his grandson.

"I'm done with living in your shadow!"

"The only shadow you're living in is your own. This isn't about proving who is the strongest, it's about tearing us apart." The words came out with a distinctly bitter taste to them. And it somehow cut through the hubbub and impacted Laxus. His eyes narrowed briefly into a glare.

"You stay out of this, brat."

"Only people I know get to call me that." I didn't care what was said, done or the truth. This wasn't the same Laxus who had flipped out a tiny bit over my slipping and falling off of a second story railing. This wasn't my family member right now.

"That...was cold." Gray stated, coming closer to me. Lucy had slipped her arm around me and was holding me close to her side in an attempt to offer comfort. It was something I would have appreciated more had I not felt like Gray had cast magic inside my gut.

"It's gonna be OK, Fae. We'll figure this out."

"Yeah, just you wait."

"It is plain to see that Laxus will not be reasoned with. He must be taken into custody as quietly as possible otherwise the Rune Knights will interfere. This whole plan hinges on Freed's runework." Makarov said at last. "Fae is the most familiar with him and his style. She will work with Levy to find a way to release the traps Freed has placed around the city-"

There came a loud crash and an indignant roar.

"What the hell is this!?" We saw Natsu sitting on his rear at the threshold of the hall, apparently having been thrown there by something. There were characters in Freed's purple script hovering in the doorway.

"'All those over 80 years old are prohibited from passing through.'" I read, the cold anger thawing in surprise. This kind of barrier was a protection that was kinda...condescending. It literally told you why you couldn't violate, pass, or do this or that. _Why would that apply to Natsu?_

"That must be what Laxus is counting on to keep Master pinned here. Dunno why it's stopping flame-brain though." Gray said, hands stuffed into his pockets, frost coating his arms up to the elbow.

I was still held against Lucy's side when the thought came to me. I patted her arm, not saying anything, but silently asking to be released. She complied and watched as I approached Simon, putting a hand on his arm and using our previous established connection to make mental contact with him.

" _Simon. You and Warren need to put up a psychic channel between everyone in the guild hall. Bickslow has got eyes inside the building. As long as he knows what we're doing, we can't hash out an actual plan. And Bickslow could use his contact here to somehow free Evergreen, and that could be troublesome if she starts making noise while we're distracted."_

Simon looked very different for having an actual face again, but he nodded, brow furrowing.

" _Bickslow... Don't think I've met him. You have a plan, I take it?"_

I kept my face as neutral as I could as I ran through my idea...

Simon then made telepathic contact with Makarov to tell him what our plan was, and then he and Warren spoke and communicated with everyone else what we were going to do.

-vVv-

Freed didn't want to look at the live feed from the guild hall. He was afraid he might see Fae's reaction again. He hadn't been able to make himself look at her after hearing her frigid dismissal of Laxus. No matter how close she had been with Laxus, that was only a fraction of the anger she must be feeling towards him right then.

This phase of the plan involved waiting. The other wizards (thinking of them as guild mates made a painful gouging sensation enter his chest) needed to first leave the hall in order for the sifting to properly take place.

Makarov still had some control over the situation in the hall. He was trying to get a counter strategy together, but there were too many conflicting opinions. Nothing would ever come of that. The pressure just had to build until they got tired and rushed out into the fray.

It was why Freed agreed to do this. To purge Fairy Tail of the weak. Makarov had led them for many years, but couldn't truly unite them. This pathetic squabbling was what had led to their terrible reputation.

 _Is that what you think or what Laxus says?_

The voice that said this sounded exactly like the person Freed was trying to avoid looking at.

" _Bickslow. Have you got eyes on Evergreen?"_

Laxus's question made Freed automatically glance towards the lens Bickslow had handed out to make sure they could all coordinate.

" _Not right now. I can't move any of my babies around except for really slowly."_

Freed shifted the view of his lens so that he could see the two remaining Rune Mages on the ground, surrounded by writing materials, both working like mad to dissolve the barrier trapping the master in the hall and-

 _You really are too clever for your own good._

Fae wasn't assisting Levy. She was drawing up a map of the city with his rune traps marked on them. She had either noticed them earlier and not said anything, or she was reading their locations right then and there.

They were about to be targeted by a focused manhunt, consisting of the entirety of the guild vs them, and they were already down one member and their starting advantage.

It still wouldn't be enough to make Laxus abandon his plan. But a little more falling apart, and hopefully just maybe...

He was watching Fae, so he saw her move. Saw her pull out the gnarled staff she had been making from under her table as she rose. Then she seemed to look right at the doll Freed was using to observe her.

She didn't do much. Just tapped the butt of her staff on the floor.

Her action was followed by a blinding flash. Freed flinched, Laxus cursed, but Bickslow yelled in pain. He would have seen that from every set of magical eyes he was using to observe events inside the guild hall, and those would be the ones he was focusing on.

They didn't hear anything but the tramping of feet. By the time Freed had blinked after images out of his eyes, the guild hall had only a few people left in it.

Fae was still looking at the camera, eyes hard and angry, holding her staff in one hand. Her other hand was drawn closer to her chest, two fingers extended and held vertical.

 _An old sign, typically made at the onset of a hand to hand battle._ Fae had pulled it out of some old samurai stories she had read. And now, she was making it, and could only be looking at him. As if she knew he was watching her.

To be honest, she probably did.

And she was saying she was taking this personally with him, not with Laxus.

" _Freed!"_ The Lightning Wizard was asking for an analysis of the current turn of events.

"They appear to have switched all communications to a telepathic channel." It was the only reason they could have coordinated it all so well without anything being said and no hand signals being given.

" _Warren doesn't have enough power to set up a telepathic network of that size."_ Laxus said tersely.

" _That and I'm not seeing anything!"_

Freed had an answer for that at least.

"The wizard they brought back with them from the incident at the Tower of Heaven possesses a strong talent for telepathy as well as Darkness Magic to conceal it. He was capable of hiding communications from a Ten Wizard Saint. They must be collaborating." Fae had happily, trustingly, told him about Simon during their last talk. The only thing that had really stood out to him as important at the time was how Simon had protected her throughout that terrible ordeal.

Laxus grunted, clearly irritated at the turn of events. It seemed as though Fairy Tail had come together far better than he had originally thought they would in the face of their current enemy.

" _Freed. Get those swap circles active. Mix things up, get their commanders out of the hall."_

" _I found Evergreen. She's asleep, tied up and blindfolded. Orange magic."_

Freed flicked his gaze over to their fallen comrade.

Orange magic meant that it was Fae who had secured Evergreen, though their last visual feed from the woman indicated it had been Erza who delivered the blows that had downed her.

Laxus was mobilizing a contingency plan Freed had put in place in case there were still too many people inside the hall, avoiding the game Laxus had proposed. But doing this meant dispensing with the charade that this was a mere game, and escalating the conflict to a full scale battle.

 _Dark Ecriture._

With his eye glowing with his magic, Freed used the cursed eye he had been born with to scan and find where he had placed his traps inside the guild hall. They were little more than one way teleportation circles that would take whoever stood in them and drop them in one of the traps outside. Simple, but effective.

 _It was a clever idea to give everyone a map, but it won't help if I can still put people inside of them._

With the map Fae had produced, and the telepaths coordinating to keep people from stumbling into the traps unawares, there hadn't been a single forced conflict between the other mages.

He had put about half a dozen circles inside the hall. He activated two of them.

Five people vanished from the hall and were placed at random throughout the city, smack in the middle of the warded circles that would pit them against one another.

There came a wordless alarm alongside the cries of the startled wizards.

Complete and utter darkness filled Freed's view of the guild hall but the sounds of work continued unhindered.

Bickslow made an annoyed sound.

" _Freed, I hate your brat."_ He couldn't hold back a slight smile of pride at that. Fae had gotten started on thinking up ways of neutralizing visual magic primarily because of Evergreen and Bickslow. And she didn't seem to be inclined to stop anytime soon.

" _She's being a pest, but she pulls her own weight."_ It was as close to a compliment as Laxus would give at the moment.

The darkness was fading, likely a temporary spell meant to keep Freed from activating other circles. The lingering haze was dispelled by yet another flash of light, this time an eye searing shade of neon green. Another sound that may have been a muffled curse from Bickslow indicated that he had been caught by the glare once again.

" _Really, really hate that little brat."_

"She's my student." Freed said stiffly. _Be careful what you say about her, Bickslow. She's my brat._ "She is not about to let herself be useless."

He swept his eye across the board again, intent on activating another teleport circle-

Fae's head snapped to the side and Gray jumped clear of the enchantment in time. All he lost were his-

" _Are you incapable of not ending up naked in one way or another!?"_

-vVv-

I glanced around the hall, taking stock of what had happened when Freed teleported random people outside.

Wakaba, Macao, Alzack, Bisca, Krov and several other guild members who had good talents in a fight or as scouts had raced out to try and locate Laxus, Freed and Bickslow. The heavier hitters would them follow them to take them out of commission.

We'd lost Mira, Elfman, Warren and- **There are more circles.**

 _"Grey, DODGE!"_

This time, however, the warning came too late, and Gray vanished.

There came a loud curse over the telepathic channel.

" _Guys, you're gonna have to count me out of any combat until Freed's down! He dropped me and Warren into one of these death traps with Romeo!"_

The adorable little six year old had been sticking close to the side of the room and had been caught in the teleport.

"Damnit!" Natsu snarled, fists clenched tightly as steam rose from his skin. Gajeel was in no better condition than his fellow Dragon Slayer. He had been blocked from leaving the hall by the same enchantment that prevented Natsu from racing out and joining the fray. "Freed! If Romeo gets hurt because of this stupid game, I'm gonna take it out of your hide!" Since Natsu was so aptly stepping in for Macao in terms of paternal threats, I turned my eyes back down to what I was doing.

On the upside, Warren, by being stuck in the same circle as Romeo, wouldn't be in any danger unless one of the Thunder Legion came along with intentions to start a fight. That meant Simon didn't need to power the whole telepathic chain of command we were using to try and keep the Thunder Legion from hearing what we were doing.

But Gray had been our man to go out and disable Bickslow.

Oh yeah, and he might get arrested for indecent exposure. Reedus quickly used his magic to sketch up a pair of pants with wings to go fly to Gray.

Mira and Elfman were-

 _Freed facing the two Strauss siblings surrounded by a field on broken rocks._

A voice drifted up from my magic with clear certainty.

 _ **The She-devil will return.**_

Then I saw an image of Mirajane in her basic Takeover form smashing Freed into the ground, snarling with rage.

I still flinched in spite of my own fury towards Freed.

It looked brutal. It looked painful.

Not to say that he didn't deserve it but-

But he was still my family.

 _ **Nab and Max have forfeited their match.**_

 _But they weren't in a circle, how-_

" _Gramps! Bickslow is possessing some of our guys and making them fight each other!"_

Bickslow's Soul Possession magic was a very, very tricky business. If he wasn't careful with what he did with it that he could easily get slammed by the law for improper use and then nothing would protect him from getting arrested. He had first tried it on Laxus, who had been skilled enough to defeat him without using his eyes, and then invited him to Fairy Tail for protection.

If he was turning that power on our guild members...

 _ **Bickslow is using his Visual Magic to alter what the other wizards are seeing in order to spark conflicts between them. Gray is facing him while protecting Romeo and Warren.**_

There came a hiss and Levy yelped in pain.

Suddenly the air was full of Bickslow's dolls were zipping around and firing down at the wizards remaining inside the hall. A few of them were heading straight for me, another three was zipping around to line up another shot at Levy. None of the attacks were very powerful individually, but they were coming from all angles, and were intent on keeping us from taking down to rune barrier.

" _Children! Scatter outside, keep listening in on the channel and avoid those traps at all costs! Anyone who gets trapped, do not harm each other, wait."_ Makarov's command was heard and everyone who could leave the hall did so. Simon veiled himself with his Darkness magic, but couldn't so the same for the rest of us. He continued to supply the power for the telepathic channel as well.

 _If Bickslow manages to stop us from working, then he keeps three people capable of fighting Laxus hand to hand trapped here._

The Soul Possession Mage was taking on a lot of tricky tasks, focusing on dozens of different perspectives at once. But part of his magic was an enhanced brain that could move fast enough to compensate for all of that. There was a reason dark guilds feared whenever the Thunder Legion went hunting. And it wasn't just because of Laxus. The dolls began their onslaught once again.

My hand whipped my staff up again as I stood quickly. The doll's blasts of magic dissipated harmlessly against a spherical white barrier that surrounded us both completely. But it was still taking a pretty bad beating from all angles. It was sucking down a lot of my magic power...

" _Iron Dragon Roar!"_ A flurry of sharp metal sand enveloped our spherical protection but instead of rattling against the shield, it...curved around it, only taking out the dolls that had been trying to disable us.

 _Ok. That is the last time I just write Gajeel off as a straight up brute. That took some seriously fine control!_

"Leave the kid alone, bastard." _Ok...is he talking about me, or about Levy?_

The runes at the entrance of the guild chimed suddenly. "Bickslow versus Gray. The winner is Bickslow." _Dammit, Grey lost!?_

" _We need to stop Bickslow from controlling those puppets. We can't work like this!"_ Levy thought to us, working in spite of her injured arm. " _Fae can't keep that shield up forever and I need her help!"_

" _Leave it to me!"_ These words came from an unusual source. A black whip lashed out and swatted another doll out of the air with a crack. " _Natsu, get me a clear path! Happy, I need wings!"_

" _You got it! Go get him!"_ A big blast of fire shot out the door, in no way hindered by the runes, and Happy zipped into the clear air carrying Lucy by the back of her shirt.

Lucy was clever, creative and had a very versatile array of gifts to pit against Bickslow. I felt good about her chances to slap the Soul Wizard around and put him out of the fight.

" _Good luck, Lucy."_

"I hate just sitting around here waiting!" Gajeel growled, punching a few more dolls out of the air. They kept on rising again as soon as Bickslow re established his control. "There's a good fight going on out there right now and we're just sitting here playing with dolls!"

"You can't just hit em until they stay down." Natsu said, catching two between his burning hands and reducing them to fistfuls of ash. "You gotta destroy em completely!"

"Good enough for me." Gajeel snarled, spewing out a metal storm that shredded the wooden dolls into floating sawdust.

 _ **Mystogan is approaching the city.**_ Without really meaning to, I read that his paired lacrima to the guild hall had been registering odd magical signatures and he had peered through enough to know what was going on. His intent seemed to be to go to the cathedral. It was a big, impressive building and Laxus was enough of a showoff that deduction could lead to one beginning their search for him there.

Unlike Bickslow's instant live feed connection, my way of keeping track of what was going on could only happen after it came to a conclusion. And even then, it was starting to make my head hurt using this passive ability of mine to keep track of my guildmates scattered throughout the city. Laxus hadn't really taken part in anything, so I couldn't instantly track him until he did so.

" _This is the Osprey Squad callin' in from the cathedral! We got eyes on Laxus."_ Bisca's voice sounded through our channel.

Makarov had been sitting on a table, completely unphased by Bickslow's magical blasts. It wasn't that they were not hurting him, they were not making contact period. His magic was radiating around him in such a way that Bickslow's attacks, meant to harry, sting and confuse but not do lasting harm, weren't even managing to touch him. At Bisca's news, he lifted his head, eyes flashing with the steel of a commander.

" _Well done, Alzack, Bisca. Retreat without drawing his attention. Keep an eye on him and inform us if he moves. Erza, go and engage Laxus until I arrive."_

" _Yes Master!"_ Erza, who had been deflecting Bickslow's dolls from my and Levy's left flank Re-quiped into her Speed Armor and was out the door faster than my eye could follow. Natsu shifted his stance to cover that side of my shield.

"My s _hield's at 30%. Master, Mystogan's heading for the cathedral as well."_ I reported tersely. The enchantment had been a hasty one, using only my memory and a quick air drawn rune to set it up. My copy of Gandalf's staff had helped me focus it, but the spell was still a lot more temporary than I wanted it to be.

" _Osprey's, circle around and meet Mystogan, one of you pass him the key to the channel so he can be properly informed of the situation."_

" _I need five more minutes."_ I glanced down at the spread of what Levy had been working on.

Lying at my feet was a paper storm with notes, scribbles and theories that had been produced and discarded as quickly as they came. Levy McGarden was a Solid Script Mage in more than one sense: When she had a piece of rune work to undo, she got it done right and she got it done fast. She had all the separate spell components laid out, she just needed to link it all together to produce the figurative key to lower the barriers. This layout had taken Freed six months of intensive labor to set up, but Levy was taking it apart in less than 20 minutes.

Destruction was always easier than creation, but it was still dang impressive that Levy could take down Freed's best work this quickly, especially considering that she had only a fraction of his power.

 _ **Bickslow has been defeated.**_

Then the dolls suddenly fell to the ground, inert and useless.

" _Bickslow is out of the game and isn't going to be causing any more trouble."_ Lucy's voice rang with deep satisfaction. Gajeel's scowl broke into a disbelieving look.

"You mean the cheerleader can actually fight!?"

Levy grinned even as she wrote out line after line of magical text meant to lower the barriers around the guild hall.

"You go Lu!"

Natsu looked very pleased.

"Yeah, she's tough as nails! "

I let down the shield with a sigh of relief.

"Can someone go knock out Evergreen au natural? I need to recover some magic power and she's been draining me trying to wake up." Natsu instantly dashed to the back and with a low thud, resolved my issue beautifully.

"Done!"

"Thanks Natsu."

"And, done!" Levy proclaimed picking up her written spell and marching to the door. She passed through without issue and I suddenly felt as though I were watching a large ornate tapestry being pulled apart by the warp suddenly evaporating. The skeleton was still there, but the functions had been erased, or negated.

"Natsu, Gajeel. You go and assist Erza at the cathedral, Laxus must be stopped at all costs." Makarov rose almost as smoothly as he always did but I caught a slight shake to his limbs. Natsu did too.

"You alright there, Gramps?"

A thought projection of Laxus snapped into existence in the center of the guild hall and he looked furious, but also determined. But this was a childish obstinance. He was determined to win this fight because in his mind, that would make him right.

I was collecting my leftover magic from assisting in making the mental map and restraining Evergreen. Consequently, I only half heard his plan, but the implications reached me loud and clear.

Thunder Palace. All around the city.

There had been several strong lightning storms set around here over the course of the summer, and I would bet that Laxus had planted his Lacrima in the spring so that they would absorb the energy over the summer and spare him from needing to do anything other than activate them when he chose.

We were now his hostages. Us and the whole city if he didn't get his way. It was time to remake Fairy Tail into the strongest guild in Fiore.

 **Makarov is having a stroke.** "Master!" I dashed over as he fell from his seat on the table. _The stress must be too much._ But it still caught my attention when Simon spoke up.

"That is not what Fairy Tail is about."

Laxus sneered.

"You got here, when? Yesterday? You don't get a say in this." Simon tapped his guild mark.

"This says I'm involved, and I think being a slave to a literal tyrant for more than ten years gives me a pretty good perspective." Well, Laxus certainly couldn't argue with that without making himself look like an even bigger jerk. So Simon stepped forward, dark eyes glittering with energy.

"Fairy Tail is not a gang of super-powered thugs, thriving on fear with no place for the little guy. That's what you want to turn it into. It's home, it's family, it's forgiveness and relying on each other. You will not improve Fairy Tail by throwing out everyone who doesn't meet your impossible standards: You will destroy it. A guild is nothing but an empty name without people to give it a soul." He held out a hand, a magic circle blooming on his hand. "You can speak to Master Makarov again when you have gotten your head knocked around enough to see reason. Now, you are leaving." And just like that, Simon unmade Laxus's projection with an outstretched hand and a burst of expertly controlled Darkness Magic and hurried over the Makarov's side. I did so as well, laying a hand on his forehead and checking his pulse and heart rate.

"We need to get his heart rate down." I said, gnawing my lower lip. "And Porlyusica needs to look at him."

"I'm glad you have that much sense, girl." Her voice came from outside as the healer strode inside. "I was on my way to make sure that this one's prosthetics were functioning as they should, but here you are, all racing around the city like madmen! This is why I don't care for people!" She looked at Makarov with narrowed eyes for a moment before beginning to give orders, starting with Simon.

"You! Pick him up and take him to the infirmary. You two, go fetch that dramatic little boy and get him to come here." This last was directed to Levy and me.

"Yes ma'am!" Levy and I both ran for the doorway-

And I experienced the unpleasant sensation of running face first into a wall.

Damning purple script hovered in the doorway.

 _All those under the age of twelve are not permitted to leave the guild hall._

"Hey! I took everything down, why is that still there!" Levy complained after she'd let go of my hand. I could read what had happened very plainly, even if I was once again steaming mad.

"He hid it under the other enchantments so it wouldn't activate until the others were taken down."

He'd figured on me staying in the guild hall, or being kept there, to help work through his first barrier. So that even when Makarov was free again, I would be trapped there for at least twice the original time.

I loved and admired Freed.

But right now, the thought of committing horrible bloody murder while screaming profanities I wasn't supposed to know was a little too attractive.

First, he had plotted with Laxus to do all of this because of his loyalty and attraction towards him. I didn't care what the actual goal was. He had still planned, plotted, to turn my family on each other, to hurt them, to tear them apart.

Second, he had kept it all a secret.

And now he was locking me out of it. Not only was he setting all of this up, but he was also putting me in a position where I couldn't go and do something about it. He was not permitting me to help.

I'd intended on talking to him after having some time to cool off after this concluded, but with this little insult...

I looked over at one of the used teleportation circles. The one that had snagged Mira and Elfman.

I was dimly aware of my eyes glowing as my magic read the circle...then I saw it change in my minds eye to be what I wanted it to do instead.

-vVv-

Freed was unsurprised that Elfman was not giving up even though he was hopelessly outclassed. His greatest strength, far beyond raw power, would always be his ability to take a beating. And he had certainly taken one now. He was barely holding onto his Beast Takeover.

 _Not much longer._

He would end this fight before this progressed too far. The Dark Ecriture was taking over more and more of his thought process. It was a ruthless style of magic, focused chiefly on survival of the fittest. Elfman had put up a good fight, but he was ultimately, not the strongest. And it was taking a lot to keep this fight from going lethal while he had the advantage.

The part of him that was still grounded and stable was keeping an eye on the enchantment he had set up to monitor all the players of this game Laxus had proposed. Specifically on those nearby who would be his duty to eliminate.

His thoughts flashed back to the conversation with Laxus when their plan had been hindered from the start by a lack of hostages.

" _There's no place in Fairy Tail for weak thinking like that."_

 _No place for the weak...but what about those who aren't strong yet?_

No place for the weak, no place for deadweight. The financial sinks that the guild supported were among the first thing Freed knew Laxus would cut, should his plan work.

Fae was strong for a child, but she was still a child and the kind of guild Laxus had in mind wouldn't be a place for her. She was still too weak, too limited in what she did to make the cut. Freed knew that and wondered, worried, if Laxus's plan did work, and he by some miracle became the guild master...What would happen to Fae? What would happen to the other wards that the guild supported? They weren't ready to face the real world, they needed protection, shelter, training if they were to be expected to survive.

Freed was thinking less and less that this was something that he wanted to keep supporting.

Elfman's punch landed.

Pain resonated through Freed's everything as all the desperation Elfman felt on behalf of who he was protecting translated to extra power and sent Freed crashing into the ground, the first telling blow he had managed to strike. Impressively, he'd managed to fight through the numerous pain inducing spells Freed had already layered on him throughout the course of the fight.

His higher cognitive functions twitched, its grip relaxing, control of his instincts weakening just a hair-

Dark Ecriture rose to take the minute amount of ground he had given in his distraction.

 _Recall._

He teleported back to the anchor rune he had placed to reliably get him positioned behind his opponents back, his sword lifting, the rune flashing to life on it's tip.

"Death."

Then he heard a female screaming in denial, in anger, in helpless frustration.

A dark power burst into life behind him. Freed used the surprise to hastily reassert his control over his power and deactivated the lethal rune before he did something he would regret forever.

Mirajane's form was tense with magical power surging around her randomly, her hair standing on end as dark purple and black energy whirled around her.

"Satan Soul..." Freed instantly knew that his ordinary level of power would not be enough.

Dark Ecriture was a survivor, and it knew an apex predator when it saw one. And this one would not be fighting blindly. That wasn't how Takeover worked. It was literally imposing one's will, and mind, over the magical power and abilities of another creature. And the Strauss siblings of Fairy Tail possessed two of the strongest variants of that magic: Beast and Satan. Monsters and demons. And there was no question as to which was more powerful.

Mirajane's transformation completed, her magic circle still glowing under her feet as she glared at him with all the malice of a demon, and all the potent love that motivated her magic to be enough to master the demons she carried within her. A cold spear of ice stabbed into his gut. Fear, the kind of fear he had never really felt before. He had been marked as a threat to something this devil held dear. His options were run or die, because he would not be able to fight her.

He would need everything he had just to get out of this encounter with the She-devil in one piece.

"Dark Ecriture: _Darkness!_ "

The physical changes that came with the transformation were painful, but manageable. He would pay the price of pain to access this power, if it would keep him alive. He then lunged straight for Mirajane. He had heard stories about her prowess at close combat, able to match Titania blow for blow. But her magical abilities were far more deadly and he needed to attack before she had time to form a spell.

He was in motion when he saw something flash between him and Mirajane...

Fae materialized on the teleportation circle, one hand clutching her staff, and bright blue eyes still glowing with magic.

All functional thought stopped.

Mirajane was about to charge, and Fae, his impossible, intrepid, brilliant apprentice had just slipped out of her safe zone through a door he had put into it himself. And she was now exactly where he hadn't wanted her to be: In his line of fire.

Fae was going to die.

It was only a question of who would do it. Whose attack would impact first: His or Mirajane's.

The guilt would be his either way.

" _Faerun!"_

In a blur of dark energy, Mirajane surged forward and snatched Fae in one clawed arm, pulling her entirely out of Freed's course. Her other hand, and accompanying magic circle sending out dozens of clawed hands constructed of magical energy...In exactly the wrong direction to even come close to touching him. Dark Ecriture spoke before he could master his own tongue.

"Are you still so unused to having your power back again, She-devil?"

Mirajane's voice was cold, and a lot deeper than it was normally, and her eyes were without mercy when she regarded him, still holding Fae in one arm.

"Those weren't for you." The hands withdrew, bearing the unmoving Elfman in their grasp. Fae looked somewhat startled, as if she hadn't known what she had gotten herself into. It was quite a lot to take in all at once.

"But you-" Mirajane cut him off sharply.

"I don't hurt my family. Demon or not." She then placed Fae on her feet as Elfman was deposited gently nearby. The young Rune Wizard instantly fell to her knees and began to check vitals and administer basic first aid.

"He's alive and will recover." She reported quickly.

"Good." The formerly sweet, almost angelic bartender whipped out her hand, black, bat like wings sprouting from her back to match the scaled tail she was currently sporting. "But I've not let any of my dark side out to play for such a long time that putting it back right away just wouldn't be right." A surge of muscles and movement, and she was hovering in midair herself, facing Freed.

He tore his eyes away from his apprentice, shaken and looking very small and frail all of a sudden. She seemed to sense he was watching her and raised her head. He'd been wrong. There was no fear in her expression. She spoke without emotion in her voice.

"We will talk after she's done thrashing you."

It was painful, to see her looking at him with such cold fury.

She was a child whose family was in danger, yet she wasn't afraid. She was enraged.

 _Not a child._ He admitted as she lifted her hand and started writing out spells meant to stabilize Elfman and unravel his enchantments on him. The sense of shame he felt at her seeing what he had been doing, face to face, without any sort of buffer, hit him even harder than Mirajane did.

 _Celeste D Faerun has never really been a child in the sense that she was naive, easily cowed or easily frightened._

Coming into the guild as she had, no memory, no past, but with magic that continually drew in more and more information, she had made her own personality. Crafted from those around her. Not all adults when she first arrived to be sure, but all older than her. All powerful casters of unique magic.

 _She's a wizard. A fully grown, fully capable wizard who's just waiting for her body to catch up with her mind._

And after what he had done here, there was another concrete, inescapable fact about the girl:

She would never view him with the same warmth and openness that she had once held towards him. She may forgive him, might even trust him again one day. But she wouldn't be just his apprentice. He wasn't worthy of that kind of trust.

 _She's not mine to protect._

 _Not anymore._


	18. The Fantasia Parade

About 10 minutes after Laxus gave his threat of destroying the city of Magnolia with his Thunder Palace, Fairy Tail gave their response.

As one, all wizards who were fighting fit attacked the lacrima that surrounded the city. All took the hit from the Body Link magic that Laxus had used to protect the lacrima. All survived. Laxus's trump card had amounted to nothing. And with that he went from unhinged to raving.

Attempting to cast Fairy Law was an impressive show of power, but he didn't have the mindset to pull it off. Not a single person was harmed by it. Laxus might have been able to convince himself to attack us, but his magic would keep him honest if nothing else.

Natsu, Gajeel and Laxus finished beating on each other before the day got too long. By mid afternoon, everything was settled, the injured had been collected and were being given treatment. Levy and I, as the least injured out of...literally everyone, spent most of that time running around as assistants to Porlyusica as she patched up the wounded. I memorized what I could about what she did, and tried my best to watch her as she worked.

I wouldn't get much better chance to observe reportedly the best healer in Fiore at work in person. When I had picked up a biography of a famous doctor once, one of his biggest credentials was that he had worked with Porlyusica before she had withdrawn into self imposed solitude.

Makarov was by far the worst off out of all of us. His stress from the day's events had strained his heart, lungs, liver and just about everything else. He had pulled through only by sheer stubbornness. Predictably, his old friend ripped him a couple new ones about his lifestyle, which would have been dangerously unhealthy in a man 50 years his junior.

Gajeel, Laxus and Natsu came away as a neatly matched set of body sized bruises and fractured bones. It should have been third degree burns, pressure lacerations, shattered bones and tetanus with the way they had been fighting. But Dragon Slayers were hax in their ability to take a beating and bounce back like a rubber ball. I found a moment to relax and laugh at how similar the Iron and Fire Slayers were no matter how much they denied it. Natsu's jaw had been wired shut and put into a cast. Being Natsu, this obviously didn't stop him from trying to talk. The funny part came up when Gajeel answered, seemingly having understood his wordless grumbles and growls perfectly.

Since I was Porlyusica's assistant, I had been gruffly assigned to go check everyone over after she had retired to set up a long term medicine regime for Makarov. I'd been told to go in order of severity, and I knew that would make Laxus the first patient I had to check in on.

I really didn't want to.

In the span of the minutes I spent attending Laxus, my respect for Porlyusica tripled. She was overcoming her personal ill feelings towards people in order to come and help us as often as she did. And when things got personal was when a healer could start to make mistakes. Laxus was responsible for immense physical and emotional damage to one of her only friends in the world, and she still had given him top notch treatment.

I thought he was asleep the whole time, but as I got up to leave him, he spoke.

"Kid." I paused, debating for an instant if I should go, or hear what he had to say.

He took the pause as a go ahead.

"Do you hate me?" The blunt question wasn't one I expected to hear from him. Nor was it one that was hard to answer.

"No." I said simply. And knowing he would want to know more, I spoke a little bit more, explaining my reasoning as it unfolded. "What you did was stupid, literally S-class stupid. I'm mad that you hurt people I love. I'm furious that you used me to keep your plan hidden, by asking me to not look for it." I forced my fist to relax as I spoke. "But I don't hate you..." I whispered, feeling very tired and, dare I say, old.

He was silent for a moment...

"Can you look at me and say that?" I turned and faced him. His face was already mostly alright. The worst of his damage came from entering Dragon Force without proper preparation. The strain that had put on his ethernano circulation system hadn't been pretty or easy to treat. Apparently being a Second Generation Dragon Slayer didn't grant him the same kind of recovery a natural Slayer would have. After Natsu went into Dragon Force, he had been in a coma for a few days sleeping it off, but had been fine when he woke up. Laxus would be hurting for a couple months yet.

 _Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Natsu and Gajeel had literal dragons tutoring them and have some of their instincts from being raised and supported by draconic magic._

 _That's great, Fae. Now stop distracting yourself and answer the painful question._

"I can forgive you, Laxus. Someday." Emotion choked my throat as I spoke. "You are part of my family, and what you did won't change that. I couldn't change it even if I wanted to. This guild is everything I've ever known and loved. But a guild is nothing without the people that are a part of it. I'm sad that you don't understand that, and will now have to leave because of it." I knew the rules. Guild Law.

Makarov had agonized and wept over the need to banish his own son from Fairy Tail. But he had done it. Why, I didn't know. I had no idea what Ivan had done to warrant it. I didn't look that far because it still pained the old man so much even after so many years. I just knew that he had done so because it was safer for the guild as a whole for Ivan to be cut loose than to keep him.

Laxus had proved that the bonds of loyalty shared by the guild wouldn't bind him enough to keep the law, Guild or otherwise. And that meant he had to be turned out. Makarov couldn't be partial now. Even though doing this would break his heart.

But I still had more to say to Laxus while I had his attention.

"While I can forgive you, eventually..." The stinging pain of betrayal jabbed my heart once again along with a low, slow burning anger. "I can't trust you...You've made it plain that I can't. You didn't lay a finger on me, but you hurt people I care about and your plan would have destroyed my home in your attempts to improve it. And what you did makes it so I can't trust the friends you persuaded to help you either."

Bickslow and Evergreen I hadn't been that close to. But the realization that my relationship with Freed would never be the same as it was before hurt me deeply.

Laxus knew Freed, out of all the Thunder Legion, could never deny him anything. He'd used him to achieve his goals like a pawn, had treated all of my friends like they were trash to be disposed of, who weren't worth fighting for and protecting...

I didn't know what I expected to see from Laxus when I looked at him again. But it plainly wasn't what I saw. Because when I looked up one more time before leaving, I saw regret written all over his face.

 _In the end, today's events aren't making anyone happy, even though we won._

I left without saying anything else.

And he didn't speak another word to me.

I checked on Gajeel and Natsu with no real incident. Natsu was still asleep, and all Gajeel wanted was some nails to snack on. (I can tell you safely that catering to this guy is a nightmare.) But the last 'intensive care' patient was Freed. And he was awake.

He saw me coming and turned away. I could practically feel the shame rolling off of him as he lay.

"Avoiding me won't help." I told him quietly, taking a seat by his bed. "I think you owe me...at least that much."

I could almost see all the horrible guilt streaming through Freed, getting bigger and bigger until it was almost swamping him.

"What I owe you...I'm not in a position to ever repay. Nor am I worthy of doing so now." Freed's voice was barely audible, whether through emotion or his condition.

 _ **He knows.**_

He knew that there wouldn't be a simple bounce back from this. He knew why I was so angry. He knew how I was feeling. Had known all along...

My vision blurred, but I stubbornly kept the tears from falling.

"Why...?"

 _Why did you do this? Why did you hurt me like this? Why?_

Being able to put words to what I was feeling was helping in the sense that I wasn't completely in the dark about what I was feeling. But on some emotional level, I still didn't understand why Freed had done this against me. If I mattered as much to him as I had seemed, and if he understood me that well, why had he done this when he knew it would only hurt me?

I was keeping back tears, but Freed was not. He didn't seem to be able to form the words but he only offered his hand.

 _ **He wants you to read for yourself.**_

That felt...cheap. I shook my head, anger edging my voice and leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

"I'm not doing that, Freed. I'm not letting you get out of explaining yourself." Words uttered aloud had a way of seeming more real and concrete than unspoken feelings and thoughts. I knew that it was cruel and maybe even petty of me to force Freed to do this...But I knew that I would understand him perfectly if I took his hand and used my Retrocognition ability to read his past reasoning. Understanding was the first step to forgiveness.

And I wasn't ready to do that yet.

I may have been able to forgive Laxus for what he had done, even if it had come painfully. But I didn't have the same closeness with him that I did with Freed. The betrayal wasn't a lost arm, like Laxus, it was a gut wound, slow, painful, ultimately fatal. I would need to address it at some point to allow it to heal completely.

But that kind of healing was something that could only come from Freed. I was still a kid. And some things just didn't need complicated solutions. He did this to our relationship, it was on him to fix it.

I'd trusted him more than anyone else. He hadn't been worthy of that trust. He knew it and I knew it. After everything I'd given him, the emotional investment, time and love, and seen wasted, I wasn't ready...

"Please..."

 _ **-don't sever all ties with me. Don't stop loving me because of this.**_

My magic told me exactly what Freed was unable to say. He must have been feeling very strongly about this because the words had a certain weight to them that other times couldn't match.

Even under the strain our relationship had put on my heart, hearing Freed sound so broken hurt. He wasn't supposed to sound like that. His story was one of passion, pride, and dignity, oft broken by a well hidden sense of humor and a penchant for being the butt of jokes. He was a teacher, a protector and a believer of order and structure down to his core to such an extent that his magic, the very expression of his life, was something that had to be organized in order to function.

A small, abused part of my soul still responded. Still wanted to reach out and take the pain away, make him smile, or laugh. Make what was wrong better.

I took it as a good sign that I would be able to let him back into my life again at some point.

But I still didn't take his hand.

"When you can look me in the eye and tell me, I will listen." I said finally, rising and grabbing the leftover supplies I'd not used in my rounds to the injured. But I hesitated before leaving, gazing down at the half glove he had given me. I had gotten so used to wearing it that I barely gave it a second thought before donning it in the morning. He had given it to me because I was his apprentice and I wore it with pride. He'd made it himself, his runes painstakingly stitched into the leather on the back of my hand, and surrounding the band that held it onto my arm.

I unbuckled it, turning back and placing it by his bedside before leaving.

"Until you can face me, tell me straight out why...I'm not your apprentice. I can't learn from someone I don't trust." I looked at him, barely keeping my composure together. "I still want to learn..." _But I won't learn from you. Not right now. Please leave me alone until we are both prepared to finish this conversation._ "So when you are ready, I will be too."

I was aware of agonized eyes watching me as I left.

-vVv-

 _Makarov entered the room after Fae had departed Freed's bedside. The Rune Wizard was turned on his side, silent and motionless. The guild master sighed._

 _More than one heart had come away broken from the encounter. Freed had been holding out the slim wavering hope that Fae would forgive him. She was a child, she bounced back. She had accepted Gajeel and Juvia without so much as blinking..._

" _You cannot assume Faerun, mature as she may be, will see this as a rational adult. Her actions with you aside, she is still a child. A child who has been hurt by one she counted on to protect her." Makarov said this as gently as he could. He officially needed to reprimand Freed. He had assigned him the child as an apprentice in the hope's that both would grow and bond with one another. And they had._

 _Fae was going to be withholding forgiveness from Freed for the time being._

 _"I know, Master..." Freed managed to choke out in a tight voice._

 _"Your actions have destroyed the relationship that you had " Makarov looked after the guild ward with a soft expression. "However, Fae will not cut you out of her life completely. Let the wounds heal, Freed. You have not lost her friendship forever."_

-vVv-

I didn't want to stay in the guild hall. I didn't want to be around anyone at all actually. I had a few hours before I had to be put together and ready for the Harvest Festival, so I went to some place I thought I was guaranteed some alone time.

That is, I went someplace I could cry without anyone asking me if I was alright because I definitely wasn't in the mood to deal with that kind of question.

But not much of the pressure release I had been expecting was coming.

I didn't feel anything anymore, I was just numb. The fear, anger and frustration seemed to have bled out of me without any further effort. But I knew it hadn't. It had just hidden somewhere deep inside, much like I was hiding now.

I was shutting out everything that wasn't about what had happened in the past 5 hours. So I didn't notice when I was no longer alone on the roof, my chosen place of retreat.

Something was put over my shoulders as a shield against the winds and the autumn chill as the sun started to descend below the horizon, and someone sat down beside me.

 _ **Mystogan.**_ My hand brushed over the ragged edges of his cloak as I pulled it around me, accepting the comfort and company he was offering with gratitude.

"I'd hate for you to get sick." His soft comment made me feel again. A gentle concern that resonated as true within me.

"That'd suck." I agreed, finally lifting my head out of my knees to look at the ocean in the distance.

We were silent for a bit longer before he spoke again.

"Erza saw underneath my mask during our scuffle with Laxus." This made a flicker of something that wasn't bitter stir in me.

I pouted at him.

"No fair! You said I'd get to see you first!"

"I said 'maybe'." He hedged. "I wear a mask for a reason, Fae."

This...triggered something in my memory. Another time my magic had just been spewing out random information without my being able to control it.

 _ **Banished prince of Edolas. Real name: Jellal. Conceals his real face due to an inordinate and awkward similarity to Ten Wizard Saint Siegrain. Read: He's physically his identical twin in just about every way. No innate magic, but very skilled at using magical tools, seems to have a particular inclination towards staves.**_

The calm words echoed through my mind. Not a reading of the past but a recalled memory of my own making.

 _Siegrain was Jellal in disguise. Jellal is also his name._

 _Siegrain was a thought projection maintained by Jellal for the purpose of infiltrating the Magic Council._

 _Mystogan isn't his twin. And he definitely isn't a thought projection._

I looked up, aware that my eyes had just finished a brief period of glowing bright blue in response to my reading the past.

He seemed to comprehend what I'd just done. It would take a while for me to take what people said at face value again. He lifted his hand and tugged down his mask, giving me a rueful smile.

The shock was jarring.

Jellal had after all kidnapped me, and even though I'd never seen him face to face, I knew what he looked like from the other's memories of the event. For someone who had known Jellal well, to see his face on Mystogan-

"Erza freaked out, didn't she?" He grimaced, clearly not pleased with his slip.

"You can put it that way...It wasn't the way I had hoped for my guildmates to see."

"So you were planning on showing us someday? All of us?" He nodded, leaning back slightly.

"Master knows my true face, and my reasons for hiding it. I had wanted to keep it quiet for as long as I could. But I think after today..." he looked down at me. "You, out of all my friends, deserve to know."

 _ **You've been hurt by secrets too much. I will tell you now before it can hurt you.**_

The words brought out a new feeling in me. It was gratitude and blessed, sweet relief intertwined in such a way that the tight chokehold anger had had on my throat couldn't stay.

Mystogan had come a long way in accepting the hugs I'd intermittently thrown his way. And I was very grateful for that, and for his reflexes. If I had tried this towards the beginning of our relationship, I almost certainly would have thrown us both off the roof with how I threw myself at him. The tears were at last freed from their tight dam behind my eyes and they weren't going to stop anytime soon.

He just held me and let me cry all of my dark feelings out so I could only feel relief for the few bright points of the day.

It was over. We were recovering.

In spite of what had happened; no one had been seriously hurt.

It was still the night of the Fantasia Parade, which is what everyone else had been working on while I hid on the roof. Not only that, but I still had gotten a slot secured so I could perform in the parade as well and was eager to see how my new spells would hold up.

And, most importantly of all: I still had friends I could trust.

-vVv-

Mystogan took Fae back downstairs once she had calmed down. She threw herself into the further preparations for the parade with such enthusiasm that lingering strains of negative feelings dissolved into good humor and anticipatory cheer for the evening ahead. He watched for a few more moments until he was certain she would be alright. He wanted to leave before anyone saw him. He was on call again. The Anima had been becoming a steadily more regular event, and it had been getting closer and closer to wizards and people.

The sheer concentration of ethernano that most people had within them let them make the transition easily, maybe with some disorientation but little else. But regular wizards, brought through the Harvester, had the ethernano surrounding them crystalized into lacrima as a defensive precaution. He'd almost been too slow to keep a pair of wizards on their job from being ensnared by venturing too close to an open Anima before he had closed it.

Most of the regular Anima, the regular harvesting points, were closed by now. And they wouldn't have enough power to try opening another one.

 _Unless they are extremely desperate._

A soft voice in the back of his mind reminded him.

 _You've been choking out their access to magic power steadily for the last ten years. They will be running short and know it. They will be growing more and more desperate._

Makarov, this Makarov, knew what he was doing and why he was doing it alone. If anyone else were caught near the Anima, they would be pulled through and best case scenario, be pulled through to Edolas with no way of using their magic. The records Mystogan had uncovered about the early use of the Anima indicated that the wizards who hadn't been caught and drained of their power went a little mad from not being able to use their power.

It was something he held in respect, being able to use power that was simply...there. Part of you like your hands or feet were part of you. It would be a great loss to someone who used it naturally. Especially his Fairy Tail friends, who lived and breathed their magic, forging it into a concrete part of their identity. He knew that if he asked, even though he only had a firm relationship with Fae out of all of them, they would do whatever they could to protect Earthland from Edolas's theft of their power.

But he wouldn't be able to stand the guilt if one of his friends were caught in the Anima and something happened to them on the other side.

He wondered if telling Fae, as he had promised to do, would be a good move. She would want to help, and that meant her impossible brain would be looking for loopholes, new innovations and new ways of getting herself into trouble. So far, everything she had done had been properly curbed and contained through her own efforts. But as her power grew, so did the risk of a potentially explosive blowback.

A hand rested on his shoulder and he looked back quickly to see Erza was behind him, face firm, but nothing like what she had looked like when she caught sight of his face.

"I don't understand, Mystogan." She started, words halting as she struggled to express what she was feeling. "I want to, but none of it seems to make sense." She paused, as if for him to say something...but she eventually shook her head.

"But in the end, it doesn't matter. The Master knows you and your reasons. I know who you are not. And you are not an enemy." Her gaze slid past him to where Fae had flown up to a large section of the float to touch up on Reedus's decorative artwork. "And I am very grateful for whatever you said to Fae that brought her back to us."

 _That...makes a lot of sense._

From what he had been informed about the Tower of Heaven, Erza knew all too well what it was like to experience betrayal and how formative it could be at a young age.

"It was the least I could do." The fearsome, terrifying wizard known as Titania smiled at him, a warm and understanding expression that transformed her features.

"Perhaps, but it means the world to her."

-vVv-

The Harvest Festival was a glorious event. The floats were decorated and outfitted with everything that they needed to make the night a hit.

My job was to open the parade.

My autumn fairy outfit was gone, replaced by a simple, single piece white dress. My hair was brushed out as long as it could be, barely brushing my shoulders and I had no shoes on.

 _Every part of a performance speaks to the audience. So you have to be aware of exactly what you're saying, and what you're helping them conclude._

Mira's reminder came into my mind as she quickly moved the brush she held over my face. She was hurriedly doing a final makeup check before she boarded her Beauty and the Beast themed float with Elfman.

"Alright, you're makeup is good. You got everything you need?" I gave her a thumb's up, a lot more steady and certain than I felt.

"Got it!" She smiled and me and gave me a quick hug.

"Alright. Your prop should be in place, and everything is primed and ready to go. And in case those pesky nerves show up; just remember: We've got your back." I hugged her back tightly, exhaling away my lingering doubts and hesitations.

"Right, I'm ready! Let's give them a show they'll never forget!"

-vVv-

Laxus had been banished from the guild he had been born in for only a few hours, but everything in his whole world seemed to have changed. Had changed. It was a new start. A new life.

It was a painful rebirth.

Part of him felt like a sentimental fool for lingering just to watch a parade. But there were a lot of tender memories for him that revolved around this event...He remembered always watching it as a little boy, complaining that his frail health wouldn't allow him to participate in the actual parade and all he could do was watch.

The first time he had been able to join the other wizards in the colorful display, he had been thrilled with pride. He had been an insufferable little brat, actually, given a minor role to placate him and shut him up. But he hadn't cared. He had been with his guild, his family...

This year would be Fae's first time showing in it.

Other parts of Magnolia's various craftsman guilds and local business always came before and the guild which had given the town so much pride was reserved for last.

Most of the parade had passed.

A spot of darkness drifted across the street. The lights, noise and cheer of the parade faded to a soft black background.

There were some soft sounds, and then a lone figure stepped forward.

Fae walked along, bare feet barely seeming to touch the ground. She was looking around, playing the part of a wide eyed child, seeming all the more innocent by the white dress she wore. She drifted over the cobbled street, turning to take in everything that was around her. Light curious music drifted through the air.

Without a word said, her eager curious steps faltered, face downturned with a touch of melancholy sadness, echoed by the music she was accompanied by. Then, she paused, looking down at something on the ground.

She bent to pick it up, a simple, ordinary stick. But she got excited, face open and vibrating with energy as she examined her new toy from end to end...Then she clasped it in both hands and closed her eyes.

It came slowly at first. Simple shapes and sparkles of different colors surrounded her, flitting and flickering. She played a bit with the new conjurations around her, chasing and being chased by others. The whole time, she was slowly retreating until her back hit something that impeded her progress. A huge dark barrier etched with a magic circle.

Complete silence fell.

It looked ominous and threatening, and she stepped back abruptly, alarmed by what she had found. The light cantrips that had so absorbed her attention faded around her as she looked at the barrier.

Laxus watched, entranced and feeling what Fae was portraying. Something he doubted anyone outside the guild would understand.

As the music began to swell, she reached out...and touched the circle before her.

It flared to life with a rainbow of color and a glow filled everyone's view...

And when it cleared, magical constructs spun through the air, moons, stars, sparkles and glittering streamers. And Fairy Tail, there was Fairy Tail, arrayed in full costume, though there was very little rhyme or reason overall. One by one, the floats started down the street, everyone had a smile, everyone was enjoying it.

And Laxus stood and observer to it all.

He hadn't stood anywhere near the beginning of the parade. The last thing he wanted was another confrontation with his former guild mates. He had simply watched the opening from the vision lacrima set up around the parade route.

And he understood it...

 _The wonder of magic is that it is magic. Not because it's especially powerful, but because just by existing, it makes the world a more beautiful place._

He watched all of his former associates, shining in the light and attention of the people who cheered them on. And smiled. It was something of regret, but also of acceptance.

It was pretty to look at, and good to see them having fun. But it wasn't anything he was still a part of. It was just a nice spectacle.

 _Even the old man._

He turned to leave. he had only gone a few steps before someone spoke to him.

" _Where do you think you're looking?"_

"Fae?"

" _Turn around!"_

There came a sudden murmur of confusion from the crowd. He turned back...and felt his mouth fall open.

Without fail, every single person he saw who was a member of Fairy Tail, held their hand aloft in the sign he had told Gramps to give when he marched in the parade more than ten years ago.

Even Natsu, who had barely been able to squeak into the parade because of his injuries, held his cast bound arm up, displaying the same sign with a shark like grin peeking out of the sides of his bandages.

" _Even if I can't see you, no matter how far away you may be, I will always be watching over you."_

High over the parade, there soared a tiny fairy, clad in white and flying on orange glowing wings. Making the exact same sign that they all were.

It was with tears in his eyes that Laxus Dreyer left Fairy Magnolia, burdened with his mistakes, but buoyed by the forgiveness and love of the family he was leaving.

-vVv-

Fae wanted to pester Mystogan about the information he had promised to tell her. About his story and why he looked exactly like Jellal, why his name was also Jellal for that matter. But she stayed patient and kept a keen eye on the clock to know when she could ditch for the day. Her boss and co-worker watched her with amusement.

Master had told them about Mystogan's identity. And the She-devil wasn't all that surprised that Fae was to be included in this circle of awareness.

"What are you so excited for today?" Mira asked, investigating a series of applicants for bartending. Since her magic was back with a vengeance, she was planning on hiring some additional help to free herself up for missions.

"I got a field trip with Mystogan." She explained, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she loaded some customer's lunch order onto her tray. "He said to meet him up by Fairy Hills."

"Oh, I take it Master approved him to take you on a job then?" Fae tripped and only a swift Cushioning Charm saved the tray she had been carrying from decorating the scrubbed floor. She whipped around, staring at Mira with wide eyes.

"What did you say?" The white haired barmaid gave a typical, ditzy smile as if she didn't have a thought in her head.

"Oh, whoops! I must have been hallucinating."

"Mira! Did Master actually approve that or not!?" All she gave in answer was blithe humming.  
Mira loved the little girl. But winding her up was sometimes just too much fun.

-vVv-

The afternoon dragged like nobody's business. It was moderately busy with people, but it still felt like an eternity for me. I was so restless, it took me almost twenty minutes to sink into meditation sufficiently to begin to etch runes on my Gandalf staff while I waited.

The iconic wizard's magical talents were many and varied, but I wanted to see if I could also gain access to his more mundane skills, such as swordplay, horse taming and an unusually keen sense of smell. It would only be a low level bonus, but it would still help.

I was going slowly and carefully, but I managed to put in a single line of text on the staff that would, hopefully, give me control of fire. It was a basic magical element, and my having Natsu on hand for comparison and training made it a solid starting point. I blew the sawdust out of the completed rune, smiling. It had held up in my previous tests, but having it be centered on a staff would hopefully be the extra edge that the rune needed to stabilize and be reusable.

 _ **Mystogan has arrived.**_

"Fae! Someone's here to see you!"

I bounded to my feet, sliding the staff into a sheathe on my back that I had rigged up. Since it seemed as though most of my best working spells would revolve around carrying some kind of prop or self made magical item, I figured getting used to hauling the stuff around would be good training. Especially if this was going to be any kind of fun working field trip.

He gave me an odd look seeing what I carried. I just grinned, conscious that I was mimicking him. But staves were a very common way of channeling magic because they were so effective. And I wanted to take this new tool of mine out for a run to see how it held up.

"Are you ready?"

"Depends on what we're gonna be doing." I replied, hands clasped behind me as I waited for more information.

"Search and retrieval in Windchime Forest. We're gathering ingredients for the Potion Makers Guild." It took a lot less magical talent to brew potions than it did to use magic like we did. The people who had magic, but weren't strong enough in their speciality to make it as wizards usually joined some other guild in the city to utilize their talents.

 _Aw, nothing to burn._ So much for getting to practice using my staff...Unless there happened to be some kind of goblin hiding under one of the rocks.

"I trust you won't be taking a leaf out of Natsu's book and indiscriminately set things on fire?"

"No..."

"Then why do you look so disappointed?" I frowned at his teasing. It was just teasing, and not actual scolding...At least I thought it was.

"With as often as I'm out and about these days, it's getting harder to progress without the chance to do some field research as to how I'm progressing." And since I didn't want to give experimental runes to anyone else to possibly get them blown up, I had hit something of a plateau in my campaign to be the best wizard I could be.

Mystogan considered this...

"Well...A little outside the forest are the remains of an ancient Stone Golem that has been taken over by a tribe of Shale Imps. I suppose we could take a little time to swing by there and see if there are any...uncommon potion ingredients nearby."

My disappointment vanished into glee.

The sane one or not, Mystogan was still part of Fairy Tail. I'm not sure if looking for fights is a profession, but if it is, Fairy Tail is the world class expert.

"I guess if we have to." I said nonchalantly, reaching out to take his hand in preparation for the Mist Spell to travel to our destination.

Mystogan got it off within a few seconds of my taking his hand.

 _ **Him not having innate magic lets him manipulate magical tools at a far greater level of skill than is normal for Earthland. And his staves are based off of Edolas designs for maximum efficiency.**_

It took me a moment or two as we were soaring on the wind to the forest that always had a soft whistling chime ringing through it, to work through what this information actually meant.

Mystogan had no magic. He relied on magical tools and tricks to use his spells. He had an unreal knack for combining their spells to amplify their overall power, and he was smart about how he did it. He had made S-class shortly before I arrived at the guild and that rank wasn't something Master was in the habit of just handing out.

Magic, as I understood it, was the agreement of internal and external ethernano. Mystogan, not having any internal ethernano, didn't have the same struggle of a regular person to produce a magical effect. He didn't have to make his internal stores play nice with the energy that surrounded him, so he had next to no delay in firing off spell after spell. His only recharge time came from the magic coming back into the air he drained to fuel his staves. It gave the illusion of near-infinite stamina.

It took about fifteen minutes of direct, wind fueled flight for us to reach our destination, and then we had to materialize in order to recharge the staff. Mystogan could go for a lot longer if he was alone, but my presence made it so that we needed to break off more frequently.

He talked to me about my Gandalf Staff, what I had done and what I still planned on doing.

He gave me a look when I told him about the extent of the powers I was planning on packing into the thing.

"Is it big enough and strong enough to stand up to that many runes?" I had thought of that but...

I shrugged.

"Don't know. But I won't know until I try it. I don't have a lot of extra stuff to go off of since my magic doesn't work quite like anyone else's. And since I'm trying to recreate Gandalf's powers from my book, and in my head, he should have all those powers...I can't think of why it shouldn't work."

My companion heard me out, shaking his head.

"Well, I'm far from an expert in runes, let alone your magic. Just please be careful, Fae. We all want to see you grow, but we really don't want you hurting yourself." I smiled at him as we walked along together.

"I will, Mystogan."

"Anything else you're going to be testing today?"

"Kinetic energy relays."

His staff had recharged enough now to take us the rest of the way to our destination, but I wanted to talk to him about what he had promised to tell me...

But I couldn't think of any way of bringing it up short of outright asking him.

So...

"Mystogan, what's Edolas?"

He looked down at me a little flatly.

"Did you read that name off of me?" I nodded sheepishly.

"Years ago. It was when everything was all so new, and a lot of the information I took in didn't really stick. I read your name too, your other name, and something about a thing called Anima..."

He looked at the sky, seeming to check the time by the angle of the sun... Then he led me off our path to a glade where we could sit.

And he started to talk.

He told me about another world where magic power was so scarce that it needed to be strictly rationed. Where being a unlicensed wizard made you get labelled as dark. Where using any magic without the express permission of the King would make you a criminal.

Where cats, Exceed, like Happy were the only ones to have their own store of magic and were revered almost like gods. (" _Any worries you had about me telling? Forget them. The little troll would be insufferable if he knew that."_ )

He told me about where he had been born...And that he had been born a prince. Prince Jellal of Edolas. (I zoned out a bit here, as I needed to beat part of my brain into a bloody pulp for suggesting that we choose Mystogan as the object of our first real crush.)

He told me about Anima, and how Edolas had been using it to steal magic power from Earthland for years. How Edolas had rapidly expanded from a single kingdom to a world wide empire because of the potent ethernano that King Faust, his father, was greedily drawing out of our world.

"I was happy that Edolas was prospering...but the way we were doing it felt wrong. We had access to nearly limitless Magic Power through the Anima, but it was all stolen. And Faust was becoming unstable, becoming more and more greedy. He was forbidding the use of magic from anyone who wasn't a vassal of the kingdom. Guilds like Fairy Tail, who only wanted to use their power to help people, were discredited because they didn't discriminate about who they helped."

Hearing that even in a parallel dimension, our guild was still the good guy, most of the time, made me smile. As did what I heard whispered in my mind:

 _ **The similarity is what drew him to the Earthland Fairy Tail in the first place.**_

"Because we were expanding, the need for magic power became even greater. Then, there was a breakthrough in technology. A new way of harvesting magic." His voice became soft, guilty even. "We could get a much stronger, longer lasting supply of energy with this technique. It was in war time, it was a saving grace in the moment...but it was wrong. "

I listened to what he didn't want to say, and then said it myself, horror filling me.

"If the Anima pulled in people, wizards, instead of just floating ethernano..."

"Then the lives of the wizards were transformed into lacrima, containing the power without allowing it to dissipate and making harvesting even easier." Mystogan's eyes were haunted and sad as he spoke. "This new Anima was used four times before I decided it was enough...I left my home, travelling through the Anima, to come here, and close it so no more lives would be lost to fuel my father's war campaigns." He held up one staff I had never seen him without, the one he always, always had with him.

"Before I left, I stole the component that they used to direct the Anima. Without it, they can't target wizards specifically, and have to rely on the ethernano that came through their standard access portals."

I sat, deep in thought about everything that I had been told.

But...not about very serious things.

 _So not only is he a prince in disguise, but a runaway, and a Big Damn, self sacrificing Hero. And he's cute._

 _No wonder he covers his face all the time and has such a mysterious rep. The awkwardness of having an all but literal clone aside, if people saw him, and knew about everything he's got, he would have the biggest fanbase in Fiore! The fangirls, the paparazzi, the horror!_

A slightly more serious thought came then...

Fairy Tail was a big guild. Not the biggest number wise in Fiore, but we were up there in terms of overall magical power with our guild monsters.

"Mystogan: How do they aim the Anima? With that staff, yeah, but..."

He smiled a little bitterly. (I could tell under his mask, don't question me!)

"They aim for concentrations of magical power."

"Does that mean they would try to capture our guild?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't need to.


	19. A Test Run

All the information Mystogan had just told me about Edolas was bouncing around in my head as we searched the forest for our prizes. This job was pay per piece with certain items being worth more than others in proportion to their rarity. We had a list to go off of and Mystogan already knew most of what we were looking for so it went easily enough.

"We want to get a good amount, but we also need to leave enough that the next year's batch will be large." Mystogan explained to me as he caught the Kree nuts I threw out of the tree at him.

He had been telling me about potion making as a whole as well, since I'd asked him.

"Potions are something we in Edolas can make. One either needs an inherent store of magic to imbue the creation with the effect you want, or you need to use magical ingredients."

"I thought you said only the Exceed had magic in Edolas."

"The Exceed can't use magic in the same way that wizards here do, they live off of what they have and have some left over to work as they please or by their natural talents." Mystogan corrected. "No, there are some plants that have magic energy that is simply unharvestable for use in magic weapons. They were useful in potions, but unfortunately they were considered useless in defending the country. Almost all of them were exterminated in the fighting."

 _So wait, there were plants with innate magic in Edolas? Could their being wiped out have something to do with the shortages of magic power in that world? And what's more, could it be reversed?_

 _I know there are certain plants that contain magic here, but the risks of transplanting an alien invasive species in a foreign world-_

I put that little thought on the shelf. Mystogan had a knack for telling when I was thinking about something crazy and finding some way to derail it. I'd see if there was a way to bring magic back into Edolas some other time. A world without magic, a life without it, was something I could scarcely comprehend and thinking about it made me sick with vertigo.

A world without magic was a world without Fairy Tail. My Fairy Tail, and that wasn't a good thought.

"Ok, quota filled, Fae, no more." I jumped out of the tree then. I had my shock absorbing seals on my ankles, so dropping the 20 some feet didn't do anything except scare Mystogan a bit. He just sighed and let it go without scolding me.

"What's next?" This little job had been fun, and instructive in multiple ways.

"Just our little trip to the rocks." Which meant it was time to get ready to fight! I felt myself start to get excited.

I was no Natsu, I didn't fight for the sake of fighting. I liked growing. I liked testing myself. And there were only so many things I could test in my mental simulations.

I unslung my staff, giving the runes a quick check over.

"Ready!"

"Good. Now put this on." He handed me a small pin and I secured it to my jacket without question.

"What's that for?"

"You'll see."

-vVv-

Of course, fighting the imps was easier said than done.

The moment I entered the clearing, the imps had swarmed out to attack me. And I froze, not sure of what to do, memories of past battles ringing in my head. They took full advantage of my distraction and I had to do some quick dancing and jumping to get clear when they came at me. Once I got my head straight, I began searching for some kind of weakness I could exploit. I wasn't feeling like making this a straight up brute force melee. It really wasn't my style...

 _ **Shale Imps use and live off of Earth Magic. Their connection with the ground makes them stronger and more durable.**_

And then I had an idea.

I had been on the back foot for a bit before I found words to help. Unusual ones, but they did help. I grinned at the tiny rocky creatures, screeching like miniature avalanches.

" _Let's see if we can get blood from a stone."_

It didn't give me any real boost, but saying the line did help me focus.

 _Surrounded on three sides with Mystogan at my back. I need some space. They're made of rock, but they're still less than three feet tall and really skinny._

" _Fire Cyclone."_ I muttered visualizing what I wanted and jabbing my staff out. A tornado of fire shot out at the enemies that were trying to close a circle around me to my left. I wanted to get away from the rock pile that was their home. I didn't like the idea of having my back turned towards it while I was pretty sure there were still some inside.

I had no real wind magic incorporated into my staff, so I had to power the spell directly, at least to start. But fire, and heat by extension, rose, so...

The tornado lifted four of the dozen imps off of the ground. I then activated the other seal testing bands on my ankles and darted forward at high speed.

All of the walking and impacts I had been putting on my legs all day was taking and storing a tiny bit of the kinetic energy of my movements. As such, I was able to zip around and smash the four airborne imps before they hit the ground. They hit the ground and remained motionless.

The other imps chittered uneasily at the display, but I wasn't letting up.

I used a copy of Macao's Rainbow Fire, as it was easier than using another tornado, to swat another two imps into the air and eliminate them. It was going pretty well, I thought.

At least until the massive pile of rocks started to quake...then started to rise.

I barely had time to blink before Mystogan grabbed me and pulled me out of the way, moving us both to a safe distance before putting me down.

"The imps inside have found the old relays that first animated the golem and are powering them. The more of them put their power into that thing, the stronger it will get." He told me quickly. "Don't let them get in." My heart was pounding with adrenaline. The fun exercise hadn't been what I expected but...I had an assignment. I had something I could do and the ability to do it.

I nodded firmly.

"Got it!"

Then Mystogan rose, unslinging another staff that seemed to warp the air around it. He threw two more to opposite sides of the clearing. They landed hard, planting themselves into the ground and their tips starting to glow.

 _ **Air Manipulation staff.**_

 _He's gonna be cutting pieces of it off, and the Shale Imps powering it, until he reaches the core and can dismantle the runes powering it._

Which left me outside to deal with the other six Shale Imps and keep them from getting inside.

They shrieked at me loudly, but made no attempt to run to the golem, instead they appeared to be swarming their fallen kin...

 _Oh no._

They fed on Earth Magic and lacrima. They were cannibalizing the fallen to get stronger!

 _ **They were here to eat the Golem, and decided to settle in it instead. Bigger body, bigger kills.**_

I knocked three imps away from eating the corpses, snatching up the glittering lacrima that served as their hearts and primary magical source. They were like rough marbles, as big around as my thumb. I pocketed them quickly, watching as the other imps I hadn't managed to stop twitched, and then suddenly grew to be about...my height. They were covered with more spikes and were about twice as bulky as they had previously been.

My height at least, made of rock, and looking mad. Not a good combo for me when I was still outnumbered.

The assignment of keeping them from entering the golem suddenly got a lot harder.

I reached for my flight rune, but it kept on eluding me. I dodged around the imps, who weren't really small enough to be considered that anymore...

 _Rock Goblins then._

I was trying to get my wings out, fly and get clear. It would make them throwing rocks a concern, but I at least wouldn't be worried about being surrounded.

But the words weren't coming. For some reason, I couldn't visualize, or feel, the air and freeness that I had been centered in when I first found the spell in me.

As the goblins swarmed in, I was forced to block several blows with my staff. It worked, but I felt an ominous creaking in the wood that suggested it might not hold up to this sort of abuse much longer. I had to get in the air, fast!

I jumped over one goblin, using him as a springboard. I felt the wind, I felt the yearning to fly in the back of my mind, but-

It didn't come.

I needed a cheat word, something to help me get it out.

" _Think of a wonderful thought...Any happy little thought."_

Wings formed on my back and I barely evaded another goblin trying to grab my leg and shot into the air.

 _Better!_

Mystogan had managed to cut off about a quarter of the golem in various bits and pieces. I suspected it was taking him a longer time since he was trying to keep an eye on me as well as fight his own battle.

Which meant I needed to find a way to beat these larger creatures and soon so Mystogan wouldn't be too distracted.

But they didn't seem to be too happy that I was suddenly out of their reach. They threw a couple rocks at me, but I dodged them easily. Earth magic spells, while powerful, had one drawback: If the effect separated from the ground, it lost power very quickly. Something like earthbending was actually pretty hard to pull off since the wizard would have to power the spell directly rather than drawing on the latent magic in the ground itself. Thus, hitting an airborne opponent was extremely difficult unless you could channel enough power to raise an entire section of ground whole.

I started a hit and run tactic, darting in and out, two or three hits and a time, one blast of fire to knock them up into the air, and then a few quick hits that they couldn't automatically shrug off. Then back in the air and out of their reach. Dodge the salvo of rocks, maybe or maybe not use a barrel roll to do so, and repeat. The goblinoid constructs\monsters were getting more and more frustrated as I kept this up. I had more mobility than they did, and their bulking up had made them slower even if it had made them quite a bit stronger.

I managed to get one down, reaching out and snatching its lacrima out of it's chest. It screamed for a moment before it crumbled, the magic holding it together dissipating as I removed its power source. This lacrima was twice as big as the others, but I still shoved it into my pocket, taking a tally of what I still had to face.

 _OK. I started with twelve little ones. Took it down to six little ones. Then they ate the corpses and I ended up with three little ones and three big ones..._

I counted them all quickly, frowning.

There were only two small ones left trying to knock me out of the air.

 _Where did the others go?_

As I thought about it, their tracks glowed on the grass, showing where they had gone. They were leaving their clearing and charging headlong into the forest. The remaining imps shook their fists at me in rage but soon broke and started running when I heard a cry.

It was a boy yelling in surprise and the sounds of a fight.

 _There's someone else they decided to go after!_

A ground bound target was in their power, in their territory. Ever since I had taken flight, their chances of success were swiftly dwindling.

About half of the remaining golem crashed to the ground.

I started flying after the goblins and imps, intent on intervening in their hunt for whatever they had decided to go after. They had changed targets because I wasn't convenient anymore.

"If you're gonna fight, then finish what you started, damnit!" I yelled, smashing down on another goblin feet first. I let my kinetic runes absorb the impact and then kicked its head off with the resulting stored energy before soaring back up again. It started to stumble around blindly, searching for its head.

"What the-" The boy, who honestly looked like Laxus reverted to a child, got distracted, and this almost let one of the imps swat him, knocking him off balance. I fired off a quick bolt of fire from my staff over his shoulder to knock the stone creature down.

"Concentrate!" I yelled. He growled and started to hit the remaining goblin. He was only a little bigger than I was, and getting into a slugging match with something made of rock was a criminally stupid idea, but...

"You can't hurt them much so long as they are touching the ground!" I called, increasing my speed to tackle another imp to keep it from flanking him. My momentum carried us both into the air and I transferred energy again to punch the imp into fragments before it could fall to the ground again. My knuckles were bleeding from the impact, but I didn't have time to acknowledge the pain.

 _No wonder Natsu has got so many calluses from punching things!_

I snatched the lacrima from the dusty shards and sprang back into the air, smacking another imp aside to keep it from flanking my spur of the moment ally.

With a yell of effort, the boy heaved the goblin into the air with a might uppercut, following up with a hard hit that cracked its chest open exposing a gleam of crystal. I stabbed the lacrima out of its chest with a spear of fire and let the pieces fall to the ground.

There were two imps and the headless goblin left. The boy tossed the imps into the air with an impressive show of raw strength and I used fire to crack them open and remove their lacrima.

Then as the dust began to settle...we saw the headless goblin run into a tree, still trying to find its head.

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh at the ridiculous sight. Clutching my stomach and staff as it stumbled around, literally blind. A moment later, the boy joined me. Only he was still on the ground and I was drifting around on my wings. The moment was ruined by the boy wincing and holding onto one of his arms momentarily.

 _ **Severe bruising around the shoulder joint. Almost dislocated from behind.**_

"Ouch." I remarked, after reading that. "You gonna be alright?" His laughter dissipated and he scowled at me.

"I'm fine!" I absently scratched my ear as I drifted towards the last goblin.

"You know, I don't tend to believe people when they shout that." I spun my staff, focusing on creating a fire blast beneath the blind enemies feet to lift it into the air.

I then dropped my heel onto it's chest in an axe kick and cracked it wide open. I retrieved the last large lacrima before I turned back to the boy. He seemed to be examining me with narrowed eyes.

"Are you a wizard?" I rolled my eyes.

"No, I'm a fairy, can't you tell?" I asked a little sarcastically, gesturing at my wings with my staff. "Yeah, I'm a wizard. And guessing by how you were throwing those things around, you are too."

"What's it to you if I am?" I would say he sounded defensive, but his tone was way too aggressive for that. I landed in front of him, out of arm's reach, just in case he started swinging.

"Not much. Just wanted to say nice job and thanks for the assist. It would have cost me a lot more power if I needed to beat them up by myself." This seemed to catch him off guard. There came a final rumble through the ground, which told me that Mystogan had finished dismantling the stone golem.

I kinda wanted to go back to him, but I noticed something about the kid who stood before me.

A patch of sunlight filtering through the lingering leaves overhead was resting on one of his bloodied hands. And it seemed to be healing him. It was slow. Really slow, but noticeable to my eyes.

"Does light heal you?" I asked. He jerked back, but I saw a thin scratch on the back of his hand seal over.

"I get magic power from light..." He muttered as though it were some kind of confession.

 _Cool!_

Hey, I knew two people who could get magic from chowing down on fire and metal. Someone absorbing sunlight and getting magic from that? That was nothing. I shook my head, putting aside the various jokes I could make about photosynthesis.

"Just sunlight?"

"Natural light gives me a little. Magical light gives me a lot." I had an idea then. A way of paying him back after he needed to get involved in my fight.

"Ok, tell you what; The Shale Imps were coming after me, but they decided I was too much trouble since I could fly and changed targets to you. I'll make some light to help you heal since you got caught up in my fight." He seemed as though he wanted to protest, but I was already picking up one of the remaining lacrima on the ground and wedging it into the nest of thin wooden roots at the top of my staff.

Tapping it on the ground and concentrating once made the crystal start to glow. I shifted my focus until it was being emitted in a narrow beam and turned it on my companion.

Now the gradual healing was much faster and noticeable. He seemed surprised, breathing in sharply as the light touched him.

"Aren't you a fire wizard? How can you make light?" I grinned, focusing on feeding my magic into the light. Since the lacrima had it's own energy, all I needed to do was convert the energy from Earth magic into some simple light. And because light was also a specialty of Gandalf's (Just look at Moria) I could feel the basic enchantment was covering most of the drain.

"I never said I was a fire wizard. You're just assuming I am."

"So what the hell are you?" He asked bluntly, looking at me somewhat distrustfully.

"I work with runes." It was accurate and true, even if it didn't cover everything that I did. The light my staff was emitting flickered out, the lacrima had vanished, its energy spent. I grabbed the second one from the ground and repeated the process. But the time I'd run through it, the boy looked perfectly normal, if a bit dusty. His shirt had once been white, though I doubted it would ever be again and I think his vest had once been orange. But I was focusing on a less visible aspect of him.

 _He_ ' _s got a lot of magic for being a kid..._ It had taken two lacrima to fill him back to where he had been, and I got the impression he could have put out a lot more than he had. And could have kept going long afterward as well. He had more overall magic than I did. A lot more actually.

"How come you can hold so much magic?" I asked, putting my staff back into its sheath. His shoulders tightened slightly.

"I'm a Dragon Slayer." As if that explained everything.

Which it actually did.

My eyes got big and I felt a surge of excitement flood over me. _Oh yeah! Another one!_ Maybe if I could ask him about his dragon, I could figure out where Igneel and Metalicana went!

"You are? That's so cool! What's your dragon's name?" He seemed somewhat taken aback that I had believed him without any argument.

"Weisslogia." His tone seemed to say he didn't want to talk about him. Now he asked a question. "You know what a Dragon Slayer is?"

"A super rare kind of magic. The only way to learn it is from a dragon or to having a lacrima with a dragon's magic planted in your body." I said cheerfully. I suppose it was a little rare to know the difference between the two types. But our guild was weird in the sense that it had both. _Or, you know, we did at least before Laxus left._

Then it hit me and I laughed triumphantly, pointing at him.

"That's why the imps went after you! You're the kind with the lacrima in you, aren't you? I bet you are. They sensed that and changed from chasing me to attack you because they wanted that lacrima!"

"How would you know that and what would they want with it?" He asked defensively. I just pulled another of the fallen lacrima from my pocket, the last small one.

"This lacrima is from one of the little guys." Then I pulled out one of the three larger ones. "This is from one of the big guys, who used to be little until he ate one of the other little guys I killed earlier. They eat Earth magic and lacrima, because it's a crystal, works like a super buffing protein for them. They get a really big boost out of eating it, because they can absorb whatever magic is stored in it even if it isn't Earth Magic."

The boy rubbed his chest absently with an odd expression on his face which got even weirder when it looked at me. I suppose it was one thing to think that monsters were going to eat you and quite another to hear that was literally what they were going to do.

I needed to get back to Mystogan before he worried, I stuffed the lacrima away, trotting over to pick up the mostly intact Rock Goblin head as a war trophy.

"I gotta go, but it was nice to meet you! It was a good fight!" I turned and started away.

"W-Wait!" He yelled suddenly. I paused and looked back at him. He seemed irritated about something as he stomped closer to me, holding out his hand. He didn't meet my gaze.

"Give me the head, and tell me your name, and I'll say we're even about the fight." I pouted briefly, but sighed and handed it to him.

"I'm Fae." He nodded sharply, tucking the head under his arm.

"I'm Sting." He then turned and stomped away without another word. I was upset at not having a cool monster part to bring home to show. But at least I got to keep the lacrima. I could probably do something with them to help make my equipment awesome.

-vVv-

It was getting later, but we stopped before we went home and Mystogan showed me another of his magical tools, which he called a Chain of Eyes. The pin he had given me was actually recording my fight and let him see how I had done, and give pointers.

"The fight alone went well." He told, observing the battle in his crystal. "You didn't get hit even once, and it was done in good time." Then he paused as Sting appeared inside the lacrima. he was silent as he watched and listened to the rest of the proceedings.

"Sting, huh?" I nodded, sitting cross legged and repairing the nicks in my staff from bashing them into pretty sharp rocks.

I expected him to ask more about him. Random Dragon Slayer boy I met in the middle of nowhere, no explanation why or anything. But he said nothing and instead turned his attention to the list of supplies we had been here to gather.

"We came away pretty well for a day's work. All in all, not bad for your first C-rank." I burst out laughing.

 _Of course! Of course, that's why it escalated like this and why there was a little Naruto clone! It was a C-rank!_

Mystogan politely waited for my hysterics to peeter to a stop before speaking.

"I saw you managed to test both of your prototypes in your fight. How do you feel about them?"

I grinned.

"They did great! I can't use the staff for anything other that light or fire spells, and the kinetic relay runes only hold a little charge. But they worked!" He hummed, tapping something against my forehead and glancing at it in his hand.

"You burned through about 80% of your safe magic supply as well. If this Sting hadn't been there to help cut the amount of work you needed to do, you'd be almost at your limit. While I'm sure you're excited to refine your runes, you'll need to work on refining your control to help your stamina in combat."

Yeah, I wasn't surprised by that at all. I had given Freed his focusing tool back, so I had been needing to ham hand my own control. It just wasn't as easy to do, but I had made it through.

"But I feel fine!"

"You're still excited and running on adrenaline. Wait for twenty minutes or so, and then tell me how you feel."

-vVv-

Mystogan carried the sound asleep young wizard back into the guild hall with a smile on his face in spite of himself.

Fae had fought bravely against her weariness, but had eventually succumbed about two minutes after he picked her up. Makarov was waiting up with Erza, waiting for them to return. Mystogan gently handed the girl over to the crimson haired wizard who accepted her with a smile that was rarely seen by anyone else.

"How did she do?"

He nodded.

"Very well. She fought wisely, kept her head when outnumbered twelve to one and adapted to her opponents. Before she even engaged, she waited until she had an opening to exploit. I would guess she read that they are much more durable when in contact with the ground since her whole strategy was about knocking them into the air and dealing as much damage as she could while they were vulnerable."

"She threw some punches too." Erza observed, glancing over her bandaged knuckles.

"A few." Mystogan admitted. _Given her relationship with Natsu, I don't think she's ever going to shy away from hand to hand combat._

Both Makarov and Erza seemed pleased and proud of the child. Erza rose still carrying her.

"I'll take her home." This left Makarov and Mystogan alone.

"You told her about Edolas?" he nodded simply. "How did she take it?" He was amused in spite of himself.

"She apparently read some of it out of my personal history years ago, but didn't think to ask what it meant. She wasn't all that surprised and accepted it."

The short man mused over this information for a few minutes more...then nodded.

"Very well. Fae is very nearly ready to take the mark if this is any evidence. She fought well, and was compassionate and courteous to her unexpected ally. Her heart is ready, but her skills will need some more polishing before I will allow her to formally join. I'll leave final preparations to you, Mystogan. It does mean you will need to stay close by in order to finish teaching her. I wanted Freed to finish her training, but she has dissolved their relationship and I will respect that."

Yes, the Rune Wizard had been quite distraught over that. Makarov had taken him aside quietly and privately to explain that he would not have Fae continue to study runes with him after her bad experience in the Battle of Fairy Tail. Being told that his beloved apprentice would be handed over to Mystogan to conclude her preparation to take the guild mark and become a full member of Fairy Tail had been quite hard for him to accept. But accept it he had. He hadn't had a choice. To press now would be to go against Fae's wish to distance herself from him, and Makarov's order.

" _I'm not saying you can't teach her, Freed. But determining her readiness will now fall to another. Your intentions were noble, and an attempt to keep her safe from the fighting. But she is a wizard, and sheltering her from every hardship will only be detrimental to her."_

On that account, Makarov had been thinking about who to ask to take over. Mystogan, meeting with him after the battle, had offered to take Fae with him on jobs and see how she performed.

"Understood, master. I feel that skillswise she is more than ready, but her hesitation at the beginning of the battle was partly preparation, but mostly nerves in my judgment. Against most other enemies, especially other wizards, it could have been a critical mistake. I will continue to take her with me for short range jobs, and the encounters we do run across will help build up her confidence."

The short master sighed, suddenly looking very old and tired.

"Once she's working, there will be nothing I can do to keep the Rune Knights from approaching her about using her talents to help them."

"I wouldn't worry about having her recruited away from us." Mystogan said dryly. Natsu would use an ice spell before Fae willingly left Fairy Tail.

"Oh I know. But it's also not the Rune Knights that worry me the most." He folded his arms, frowning with deep concern as he looked at the door which Erza and Fae had passed through as they left the hall. "It's the nobles and other wealthy classes. They will either want to buy Fae's services exclusively for themselves in order to exploit her talents to their advantage, or discredit and dispose of her out of fear for what skeletons she might uncover in their closets. Fae could ruin someone's life with a handful of words, or show anyone exactly what kind of person someone is with her illusions. She already has read most every secret this guild has without even trying. And only now does she have any idea of how to not read something or someone's past."

Yes, Mystogan had thought of that as well. He may have not been a prince for many years, but he still remembered some aspects of court life.

"She'll be as prepared as I can help her be. And she won't be alone." That was the single greatest strength Fairy Tail had, here and in Edolas in Mystogan's opinion.

They were loyal, loyal down to the core of their being to each other and their standards of work and living. If one of them threw a punch, then the rest would be behind it. If one of them was assaulted, the rest would respond to protect and defend their own.

Fae was a guild child, raised if not born. At the first hint of potential danger, she would have friends ready and waiting to back her.

She would be alright.

-vVv-

By the next morning, everyone knew about how my little adventure with Mystogan had included a fight. Though some people seemed to think that I'd been the one to fight the golem, which needed to be corrected. Then again, some people didn't want to be corrected since it gave them an excuse to drink in the morning.

"I didn't go near the golem after it woke up. Mystogan handled it." I told Lucy and Levy as I worked on my kinetic runes. Since their test run had gone well, I wanted to play with them more and make them better before I made a more permanent item.

And it was time to test if the staff could handle another rune.

Busy, busy, busy.

"They'll take whatever excuse they can to celebrate." Levy comforted me. "And we're all proud of you. Twelve Shale imps is nothing to sneeze at, especially if a few of them managed to double up."

"I'm still amazed that he let you take on twelve of anything alone." Lucy said, picking at her breakfast.

"I am too, to be honest. But it was...educational." I was reasonably certain I would have made it through the fight without Sting's help. But if using so much power was going to be a regular thing, then I would definitely need to get a partner, or continue going on jobs with a more experienced wizard to cover my bases until I got my control perfected.

 _I got...nine of them alone, I think. Two were an assist and Sting beat one of them by himself._

Killing nine imps and goblins, plus healing Sting and fixing my staff, equalled about 80% of my magic power. Especially considering that I didn't lose much energy to fix Sting up... It would have been very, very close if I'd needed to face all of them alone. And then, if my staff had broken, it would have cost me everything and I'd have needed to retreat. That was a vulnerability I hadn't really considered.

 _I definitely need more buffs. The staff and the leg bands helped even the score, but I need more._

I knew it was somewhat foolish of me to compare myself to my friends in the guild. They were champion fighters, tried and tested with years of experience. But...it wasn't really stopping me from looking on how to improve.

I pulled out my syllabary and started to scroll through what runes I had already discovered, looking for which ones I could turn into a reasonable magical item...

Lucy was examining my staff, which during my repairs, had gotten a lot more weathered looking.

"You only finished making this the day before yesterday. How does it look this old already?"

"Magic." I replied distantly. "I made it to mirror Gandalf's staff, and his staff is about as old as he is, so it's really weathered. I don't get why fixing it after the fight made it look like that. Maybe it's just my magic making it look more like what I imagine it should be."

"Are you gonna start performing Lord of the Rings like you do the Legend of Zelda?" Levy asked, also examining my staff. "It's got the potential for some amazing visuals, and you've clearly already got some of them in mind."

"That would be a pretty long term project and we're barely halfway through the first one." That and narrating Lord of the Rings wasn't an appealing notion to me. I wanted to iron it out to the point where I would simply supply the story in my mind and it would play like a movie. (It was a concept that was fairly new still. There was mostly focus on theatre in Fiore instead of innovative ways to apply magic to entertainment.)

I had woven my story up through the three different temples, with Link in pursuit of Zelda and continuously running into Ghirahim. I sometimes could manage telling a whole dungeon in one sitting, depending on my magic levels for the day, but if there was anything plot heavy going on, or any sort of character development, then it took longer.

I'd started adding an interactive element to the story, pausing in certain points and letting people in the audience try their brain at the puzzles that were such a key part of any story. It was very popular with the younger crowd, and sometimes, the not so young as well.

My finger stopped on one rune in my syllabary. It read _balance_ , but that wasn't what had really caught my attention.

I had come through the fight with the Shale Imps pretty much ok, my only real mistake was not having good enough control to be conservative about my magic use. That was something that would come with practice. Without an actual physical focus, that would mean I needed an exercise that accomplished the same.

Naruto was a good source of energy control techniques, and since my overall defensive capabilities naturally were kinda...lacking. My best bet at lasting in fights would be to keep doing what I'd done; Not getting hit in the first place. But the potential of drawing from Naruto...It was also making me think some more...

 _The main character is himself a literal monster in terms of stamina and staying power from childhood on. Almost all of his abilities revolve around getting in close and whaling on his enemy until it collapses. But it's physical fighting, physical contact in many cases._

He had lousy control to start with, but made up for it with having so much power to throw around that it didn't matter if he used four times as much power as the next guy because he could afford it.

I couldn't, but that was what practice was for.

Drawing on Naruto's abilities meant grace and power because of his long arduous hours of training. It also ought to grant a decent level of stealth, since the guy literally wore bright orange and still managed a ridiculous amount of stunts without being seen until the deed was done. But most importantly for me, he had stamina, lasting power in a fight and the ability to bounce back from most any injury like a rubber ball. And even at a low level of strength, he had also possessed a low level fast healing ability. Even as a green rookie ninja, his hand had healed from a deep, rough stab wound meant to bleed out poison.

 _Ok! Target acquired!_

I started to go through my runes and select which ones could apply to making a ninja enhancement.

 _The fast healing effect will be the hardest I think..._

While healing magic was not unheard of, it was uncommonly rare and draining to use. My only wanting to heal myself ought to make it a little easier to hash out...

My mind felt like it was working at lightning speed as I pulled out simple words that I could use to craft Naruto as a character. And as for an appropriate focusing tool...

 _Where did Mystogan get that bandana with the forehead protector and who can I get to etch it for me?_


	20. YOU ARE MY RIVAL!

My studying throughout the week didn't prove as productive as I'd hoped.

Everyone and their dog seemed to be determined to interrupt me, intentionally or not. Not to say that it wasn't funny at some moments. All in all, it was fairly standard guild life.

First, my mental Nalu ship started pinging happily. It had been Macau and Wakaba talking about the good old days of their generation. The talk had trickled from their time period to speculation and wondering when and with whom the current generation would settle down.

That was two days ago. And now all of my ships were going off quietly because everyone was gossiping about the people involved.

"How do you tune them out?" I asked Levy, trying to focus through the mental chatter.

"Practice and a good pair of earplugs."

The usual noise wasn't hard to filter through. Natsu was dancing on a table, now he and Gray were picking a fight with one another, Lucy was caught in the middle, Happy was making his comments and stuffing his face. Normal things. I had almost reduced the 'updates' to complete mute.

Then Juvia walked in and for some reason, this set off all my alarms. I looked at her more closely and saw that she was carrying a potion. Even just looking at it, it seemed shady to me. She was also being super shifty and staring at Gray with lovestruck eyes. So after watching her agonize for a few minutes, I bit the bullet and got up to talk to her.

"Juvia, what are you doing?" She jumped, but soon beamed down at me.

"I have found the way at last to my beloved's heart!" She held the bottle close to her chest, cradling it like it was a living child. I deadpanned for a split second.

"A love potion? Seriously?" _There's committed and then there's desperate. Three guesses which one this falls under._

She had the decency to blush.

"I know my love's feelings for me, but he simply needs some additional encouragement to express his feelings!"

"So your solution is to drug him. In a word, to try to get him drunk." The blush became darker and more pronounced and she fidgeted awkwardly.

"Well...it can't hurt, can it?" I considered this...

"You did make sure it won't accidentally poison him or anyone else, right?" She nodded vigorously.

"It was the first thing I checked! Just watch, Fae! My love will gaze at me with more passion than he ever has!" I narrowed my eyes and touched the bottle briefly.

It...vaguely resembled a potion meant for competition. Just to help people focus and allow them to push themselves further than normal. But it had since aged quite a bit so the effect was quite a bit stronger...

 _ **Through sheer dumb luck, and a man mixing in roughly the right ingredients at random, it's become a rival making potion.**_

Literally that. The first thing or person someone saw after taking a dose of that would become the object of their fixation and they would then obsess over beating that thing or person.

 _This...will result in absolute, but somewhat entertaining chaos. Hopefully with minimal property damage._

"I...hate to tell you this Juvia. I don't think it will work the way you want it to."

She was undeterred. Of course.

And even as the Gruvia ship got stronger on her part, the Nalu section started to explode. I didn't read why until I walked by Lucy.

 _ **Natsu has asked her to meet him this evening under the old tree.**_

The...The Old Tree? As in the place-where-I-do-not-ever-go-barefoot-or-touch-anything-ever-again? It was a popular place for couples to meet up. I would be...very surprised if that was why Natsu wanted to see Lucy there though.

By this point, Juvia had finally worked up the nerve to try the potion. There were purple bubbles of something neither liquid nor gas floating around the room, randomly afflicting various people.

Soon almost everyone in the guild hall was trying to outdo each other. Master had declared alcohol his rival, though I wasn't entirely sure if he had been dosed at all. Cana was trying to outdrink him. Mira was trying to pick a fight with Erza, but was being ignored in favor of Erza verbally abusing one of the structural pillars of the guild hall. Elfman was trying to find someone who wasn't already focused on someone or something else to fight with, but he was being ignored at every turn.

As I had warned, Juvia's plan had gone hilariously awry. Gray had fixated on Happy of all things and was trying to challenge the winged cat to a flying competition. Meanwhile, all Happy wanted to do was eat his fish.

 _Kinda weird Natsu didn't take him along for...whatever he was planning on doing._

Lucy had already left, clearly deep in thought and worrying over the implications of her future meeting. Actually, the fact that Natsu wasn't bringing Happy in on this was kinda telling. Happy was involved in just about everything Natsu did. Except for this meeting with Lucy...

 _Did he actually ask Lucy out or am I tripping?_ I was certain I hadn't been touched by one of the bubbles...Or maybe targeted was the better word. There was a collection of them drifting around, and I felt like they were watching me.

I decided, to better preserve my sanity and writing, to leave the hall. A quick Bubble-head charm thwarted the bubbles when they chased after me.

 _What was in that potion originally!?_

-vVv-

Unfortunately, the madness followed me there.

Happy, wailing like a child, started to hide behind me, trembling.

"Fae! Gray's finally lost it! He's trying to kill me!" I patted the blue cat's head reassuringly.

"It can't be that bad, can it?"

"THERE YOU ARE!" Gray's shout made sure everyone nearby heard him. Thus, most of the civilians were quickly getting out of the way of what they anticipated to be another Fairy Tail brawl.

"YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME, YOU BLUE SCAREDY CAT! COME AT ME, WE'RE THROWING DOWN, RIGHT NOW, YOU AND ME!"

"Hi Gray." This simple greeting seemed to normalize him for a few seconds.

"Hi Fae, I was wondering where you were." Happy tried to slip away from them while the Ice Wizard seemed to be distracted. "WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?!"

Juvia seemed to be having a moment. I was concerned for a moment that she was somehow upset but then I saw her absolutely glowing smile as she regarded Gray.

"My beloved cares for you so much that even roused to such passion he won't raise his voice to you!"

 _Ok...Apparently being a child means I don't register as a rival, even potentially. Given who all she considers her rival, I was worried for a second._

Happy then had a bright idea.

"Hey Gray! I'm not the only one who's weak and can fly, remember? Fae is like that too!" This seemed to freeze Gray up as he tried to process this new realization.

I gave the desperate animal a flat look and imitated Erza's smack down on his head, albeit without a metal gauntlet, but it still made him yelp in pain.

"Ok. One: no throwing me under the bus. Two: I may not be one of the guild's top fighters, but I am not weak."

I couldn't really make out what all was going on with Gray; it mostly involved a lot of conflicting emotions and internal yelling. But his magic was starting to condense around him in a visible aura...

"NO! YOU ARE MY RIVAL HAPPY! RAAAAAAAGH!"

Gray grabbed the cat and dashed for a high building by the ocean. Juvia naturally followed him and I was left standing alone, wondering what the heck had just happened...

And thinking that it was a wonderful thing that Natsu and Lucy were occupied today. Another guild war might have started if Lucy picked Juvia as her rival and went for Gray's attention while she was under the potion's influence.

 _ **Gray is still attracted to her and-**_

 _Shut up, shut up, shut up...!_

I mentally punched the voice into submission before it could continue. Juvia had proven that when it came to women gunning for Gray, that her instincts were on par with mind reading. She may have been thoroughly distracted, but I was taking no chances on her...Gray-sense tingling and coming for me later to find out why.

And Natsu...well Natsu was already a complete maniac and prone to strange fixations, so on the one hand, the potion might not change anything at all.

On the other, with our luck, it could lead to Natsu seeing himself in a mirror and declaring himself his rival and burning down the guild hall in the process.

-vVv-

I tried not to look at what Lucy and Natsu were doing. If it was an actual date, they deserved some privacy. But the Nalu ship turned a dejected blue and the explanation of what Natsu had been thinking made me start to laugh. Apparently, he wanted Lucy to help him find an old book of embarrassing photos that he had somehow concluded was buried beneath the tree. So when she showed up in a nice cocktail dress, he was covered in dirt and digging a third waist-deep hole.. He didn't even notice her outfit, and just asked her to summon Virgo to help him dig. _Why_ _didn't he just ask me first? I could have told him there's nothing there in the first place, not to mention that I know every embarrassing story about the entire guild._

 _The question is, what do I do about this, if anything? It's not my place to interfere, but at the same time, I'm the only one who knows how upset Lucy is right now..._

-vVv-

I wasn't supposed to be out this late, but I knocked on Lucy's door anyway that evening.

She looked like she had been crying, and bravely attempted a smile when she saw me.

"Hey Fae, what are you doing out here so late?" In answer, I held up ice cream, and a lacrima.

"One time offer: exclusive pre-production screening of the first scenes of the Lord of the Rings the motion picture, as imagined by yours truly." Her laugh was genuine as she pulled me inside.

"You're the best."

Lucy was thrilled to see what I had visualized and eager to give both praise and commentary. Her melancholy seemed completely banished, but there was an eagerly jumping thought from the Nalu shipping corner that wasn't leaving me alone.

Finally, I let it out.

"You know, Lucy...Natsu is an idiot. But he does like you back." I may as well have spray painted her face red. She looked mortified and seemed to be at a loss for words.

 _What did I-?_

 _Oh..._

 _'Like you back'. I am an idiot too. Natsu, you have been upgraded to a common cold in terms of contagion._

It wasn't like I was embarrassed about this though. I'd been in the loop for months. So...

"How...How do you know that I like him? You have no way of actually knowing, it's just a big misunderstanding!" Lucy was warming to her rant, having abandoned her seat and empty ice cream bowl to start pacing, gesturing wildly. It was actually...kinda funny. Did I have it in me to be a ship teasing troll, youth notwithstanding? I'd have to see.

"I mean yeah, he brought me into Fairy Tail and has been a super good friend. And he's saved me a bunch of times!"

"And randomly breaks into your house just to say hi, and has a passionate aversion to going on jobs with anyone except you." I added, feeding her rant and watching her face glow with embarrassment. _Ok, this is actually kinda fun._

"And that! He's a rude jerk who doesn't know what personal boundaries are! I've had to kick him out of my house four or five times in the last month alone!"

"Not counting the three times you just let him sleep." I said between bites of ice cream. This was way more entertaining than the lacrima I had brought.

"Fae!"

I did eventually have mercy on Lucy and stop teasing her about Natsu after she vehemently denied being interested or even attracted to him for a good three hours. I could tell she wasn't actually all that mad at my playing around since she made up a bed on the couch for me without any prompting. Still saying the whole time that she absolutely, definitely, indisputably, in no way whatsoever liked Natsu.

-vVv-

I went back down to the ocean the next morning, since my magic told me that Gray and Juvia still hadn't left the area.

I got there in time to see Juvia pour the rest of the potion down Gray's throat and watch him basically combust.

"LISTEN UP, YOU ARROGANT HORIZON! FROM THIS DAY ON YOU ARE MY RIVAL...!"

And then he proceeded to run on water out to the horizon and out of sight. I watched...then took out a piece of paper and wrote a message on it.

 _Dear Master,_

 _Gray appears to have discovered a new magical technique that lets him walk on water and is gunning for the horizon with no sign of stopping anytime soon. He is apparently unaware that by definition he can never catch it. I'll be going after him to retrieve him before he slows down and potentially drowns. Please let Mira know that I'll be late to work today._

I folded the piece of paper into an airplane and sent it flying towards the guild hall with a whispered word, then I jumped off the edge of the harbor into the air, and started flying after Gray.

And that was just the middle of the week.

-vVv-

It was supposed to be a productive weekend of studying in preparation for my becoming a ninja. (Not that I had told anyone that was what I was doing.) It had been in the morning and early afternoon with my hashing out a couple prototypes to test for permanent placement once I recovered my energy.

And then, Hurricane Natsu kidnapped me to introduce me to one of his and Happy's favorite pastimes:

Breaking into Lucy's house while she was away.

They had a habit of doing this whenever she went on a job that didn't involve them. I had the feeling that it was their way of punishing her...

A glittery pink voice giggling in the back corner of my mind with a huge 'NaLu' banner hung over it, making me bash my head against Natsu's shoulder to try and drown it out.

"I feel like you just brought me along as a convenient skeleton key." I told Natsu as he piggybacked me inside after I unlocked the door.

"Nah, Happy and I would have come in through the window like we normally do. But Lucy got really mad at us last time we did that."

"You are breaking into her house, so I say she's justified."

"If she doesn't want us to do it, then she shouldn't be so funny when we do it!" I gave Happy a flat look.

"Careful, cat. If you become any more of a troll, we'll find you stuffed under a bridge somewhere one of these days."

"Huh?" Both he and Natsu said this in stereo, looking at me in obvious confusion. I sighed, slumping over Natsu's shoulder.

"This is why I'm friends with Lucy and Levy as well..."

I was tired, and Natsu saw no problem with hauling me around like a strange backpack, so he went through and headed straight for Lucy's kitchen. He seemed to know his way around pretty well, so that told me how frequently he came here to freeload. And how good his nose for food was.

"Hey Fae, you want anything?" He asked as he peered through the cupboards. I was half dozing on his back and mumbled a negative, blearily thinking about how loud Lucy would yell when she found us in here, and if she would have good enough aim to only hit Natsu.

The Dragon Slayer and his sidekick happily made themselves at home while I curled up on the couch with a yawn.

"Do you only come here to eat Lucy's food or what?"

"Nope! We had a really cool sleepover with the whole team once!" Happy said, chowing on some fish while sitting on Lucy's pillow. I looked at him for a second, then moved him elsewhere with a muttered Levitation spell. No matter how fresh, I didn't think that Lucy would appreciate her pillow smelling like Happy's favorite food. He was lost in fishy bliss, so he didn't even seem to notice.

"Hey, we should have another one of those with everyone!" I...didn't turn so much as flop to look at Natsu.

"Not even you can believe that the whole guild would fit into this place." He grinned, munching on what looked like some super spicy jerky.

 _ **Lucy does not like spicy food.**_

 _But she definitely doesn't want him breaking in, oh no..._

"'Course not! I mean bring you along too! Last time we did it, you were off in your baby badass training with Mystogan so you didn't get to come. It'll be fun! And with you there, we can really play Truth or Dare without anyone cheating-!"

 _Ok...little bad that he's breaking into Lucy's place regularly. Kinda bad that he's dragging me along. Worse that he's planning on inviting other people into a house that isn't his._

I smiled as I looked up at the ceiling of Lucy's apartment.

 _Kinda nice that he wants to do it again just so I can be there._

Natsu was the one who had brought me to the guild, to Fairy Tail. He taught me how to throw a good punch long before my magic resurfaced and had been including me in his antics whenever we had been around each other.

The child part of me was happy at being included.

The adult part of me recognized it as something deeper. He had brought me to Fairy Tail, apparently after I had extracted a promise that he do so. But even after that, he stuck around, took a vested interest in me. And now with Lucy, he was still staying close to her.

Saying it out loud and to his face would never be the same as the fact.

Natsu had a responsible streak in regards to looking out for people he impacted personally. Happy was the first example of that, having hatched under his and Lisanna's care and never having moved from his side throughout his few years of life.

Then he had found me, and brought me back to his home. I recalled his voice during the first dim recollections I had of my recovery under Porlyusica's care from my injuries. He had been a regular visitor, recounting how this or that job went. It was through him that Gray and Erza became part of my life because they had gotten curious about where he was going so frequently. And ever since that day, he had been there, not teaching full time, but supportive and encouraging.

With Lucy, Natsu had met her, and deemed her a good addition to the guild, so he brought her back and introduced her to the right people. I don't think Lucy realized it, but his endorsement alone spoke a lot about where she was in his regard and respect. (Though he probably didn't consciously realize it.) Even after Lucy became part of us within days, he still kept an eye on her, and now was regularly involving himself in her life, much as he had done to me.

 _Although he has a slightly different motivation with her..._

I chalked it up to a dragon's protective/possessive instincts. Natsu had lost his father as a child and with him a lot of his guidance. That meant that when he found someone who was lost in some way, he wanted to go and find them as Fairy Tail had found him.

Family. That's who Natsu was, he was family. The whole guild was, of course, but he was my family.

And his flying troll of a cat too.

I was very definitely falling asleep on the sinfully comfy couch as these thoughts drifted through my head through a detached, floating sensation that told me I would fall asleep very soon.

 _Best brother ever..._

-vVv-

Lucy got back way later from her job than she had expected. All she wanted to do was change, brush her teeth and fall happily into bed, grateful that she didn't need to be anywhere in particular for the next 24 hours.

Finding her door unlocked, she had her suspicions.

When she came upstairs into her loft room, she confirmed them, and also felt her heart melting a little bit.

Natsu and Happy were there, as she expected. And she also saw how they had unlocked her door without damaging it.

Fae was asleep on the couch, curled up and draped over one of the arms with a throw blanket covering her and Happy asleep on top of it and her. Natsu was sprawled on the floor close by, having fallen asleep sitting up. There were the remains of some kind of game on the floor.

From what she could guess, Fae had succumbed to dreamland first, prompting one of them to cover her so she could rest a little easier. Natsu and Happy had played for a bit before Happy knocked out as well, and then finally, Natsu fell asleep on the floor watching over his two companions, all while still waiting for her.

She was still annoyed that they had broken in, but this was a far cry better than them sneaking in through her window at night.

 _Whatever. I'll deal with it tomorrow. I'm too tired to throw them out right now..._

 _-_ vVv _-_

Lucy wasn't used to waking up to the smell of food. Nor the smell of fish.

Her hand shot out from under her comforter and knocked Happy off of her chest.

"Thanks for the terrific wake up, fish breath." She grumbled, shuddering. Happy didn't even seem phased just popped out his wings and zipped to the kitchen.

"Hey guys! She's awake!"

"Good! Can we eat now? I'm starving!"

"Wait for Lucy to get dressed, Natsu."

"It's not gonna kill you to wait for another few minutes."

 _Wait...Natsu, Happy and Fae were here last night. When did Gray and Erza show up!?_

Lucy scrambled to put herself together and move into her kitchen.

Fae was manning the stove, standing a small footstool to reach more easily. And she was making pancakes with great speed. Erza was slicing fruit, and sneaking strawberries, while Gray was fending Natsu off of the stacks of flapjacks Fae had already made.

"What are you all doing here?" Lucy asked, still trying to wake up in order to think clearly.

"Team breakfast." Fae replied, sliding another handful of finished pancakes onto a plate. "With yours truly employed as the cook because no one else can."

Lucy's small kitchen was crowded with six of them in it, but Fae seemed to have the situation well in hand, or out of it as the case was. She was intermittently using small levitation spells to guide her tools in spite of Natsu and Gray scuffling. Without it, there would have been at least two catastrophic batter spills.

"You're not using any words or incantations." Fae held up her hand, to show a strip of paper around her wrist.

"I borrowed some tools from your desk to make this a little easier. If you're up though, that means I get to stop and we all get to eat." She snapped her fingers and the table was set and all food in place in three seconds. "So grab while you can, Lucy, cause once Gray stops restraining Natsu, there is going to be nothing but carnage!"

As predicted, it was carnage. Complete and utter.

Erza had a monopoly on the cream and strawberries. Natsu and Happy were having a syrup chugging contest. Gray was trying to reason with Erza to give up some of the whipped cream. Fae was calmly eating as if this were the most tranquil environment she had ever been in and Lucy was torn between laughing at the chaos and enjoying the breakfast she was being treated to.

Fae grinned at her and winked, mouthing at her;

 _Whoever eats the most is on dish duty._

Lucy snickered and nodded her agreement.

 _I love my friends._

 _-_ vVv _-_

I was heading home after the impromptu gathering in Lucy's apartment. I had wondered how Gray ended up inside the apartment before the rest of us woke up, and had gotten an interesting little tidbit for my trouble...

 _Is it concerning that Mira somehow has a copy of Lucy's house key and that she just_ _gave_ _it to Gray?_

Since it was Gray, and he'd as soon as cut off his own hands than hurt someone he cared about, probably not. But on some levels, it probably ought to be worrying.

At least about Juvia if nothing else!

Then again, if she hadn't already tried to give Gray the key to her place, she-

 _ **She skipped right to trying to move in with him.**_

That was more than a little disturbing!

I'd actually gotten the chance to talk to Gray on our return flight after the little Rival Potion fiasco about how he was handling being the object of such...rigorous affections.

-vVv-

" _It's cool and all that she's going for it. She's my guildmate and I'd die for her like I would for any of you...But, yeah it does get kinda annoying when she just won't take no for an answer." I hummed, keeping my arms firmly locked under Gray's arms as we flew. I had to take it a little slower on the way back to account for the increased weight. It was fine, though. It had given us time to chat._

" _I feel you." I said, all too honestly. The Ice Wizard paused for a second..._

" _...You literally do, don't you." I sighed._

" _Yup. It counts as a romance from her perspective. That romance and you are literally a basic part of her life. I am always getting weird notices in my head about what she sees as a romantic gesture, or some moment that one might consider as 'evidence of reciprocated feelings'." Gray made a sound that conveyed both nausea and choking._

 _"Hold on a second. Doe_ _s that mean you are in on every dirty secret of every person you know?"_

" _If you can find it in a romance, then I know about it. It's a popular genre for a reason." Probably because that kind of relationship was something you could find in real life on a casual basis as well as an epic adventure story. And then were was my favorite out of the whole genre: Comedy._

 _Oh I had plans for how best to torture my elders. Among other things, I had this idea to roleplay Sherlock Holmes for a day to see what happened. With what I did instinctively with my magic, I could totally pull it off, and just maybe I could get the intellectual boost to be on the level that the genius detective was renowned for. I just needed the right accent and a deerstalker hat._

" _That's...horrible."_ Well, he certainly understands the potential drawbacks.

" _I just try not to think about it too much." He was silent for another moment..._

" _Any chance you could warn me about anything crazy Juvia is planning?"_

" _Gray, she's already planned out your wedding, reception, honeymoon and first house and has picked out names for more than thirty kids... And all of this began a week after she first laid eyes on you. You're going to have to narrow that request down a little."_

 _Gray, who normally had a stomach like iron when it came to travelling, groaned suddenly, sounding very sick as we continued to fly._

" _...right...Short term schemes, max limit of one week to execution."_

" _Fair warning: I can't help with any of her spontaneous stuff, only premeditated plans. And I can only pass info discreetly. If she or Mira ever figure out I can do this, then it will be open season for matchmaking-" Gray finished the thought for me._

" _-And nobody wants that. Deal."_

 _-_ vVv _-_

As I was taking a walk home, walking on the edge of the canal wall, much like Lucy did on her way home in the evenings. I heard the voice of my magic speak, clearly and distinctly.

 _ **Fairy Tail will gain two new members.l**_

That was it.

That was all the information I could get. Nothing about how, when or who.

 _Ya know, some days I hate you._

I addressed that to the voice in my head as I continued on my way. The guild hall wasn't open for business today, since the week's completed jobs were being organized and the new requests were being set out. There were a good number of regular, routine jobs on the board, such as the supply run Mystogan had taken me on. And they were easy to report and file, you just had to note anything unusual that happened. Like, say, fighting a Stone Golem.

The more unique jobs were a good bit harder. It was also no help that some people were notoriously bad about giving reports. Gildarts had yet to give reports for the three ten year quests he went on before he took the century quest and disappeared.

I was still trying to figure out if he had done it like that on purpose to get out of the paperwork.

I shook my head, throwing off my speculations and focusing on my current project again: Becoming a ninja!

I'd found a place that would make me a sturdy headband with a forehead protector like what Mystogan wore. I had placed the order during the week, and I had today to go pick it up!

I picked up my pace a little to a merry skip along the low wall.

"Careful kid! The fish are biting today, I'd hate for you to scare them off if you fall in!" The show of concern, veiled by friendly heckling, made me laugh and wave as I ran.

Erza and Natsu's combat teachings had given me an almost unparalleled sense of balance. Sure, dealing with a growth spurt would no doubt throw it out of whack and make me start over from the bottom. But for now? I was as sure footed on the ground as I was in the air!

I entered the guild hall through an upper story window. Testing all available entrances and exits certainly wasn't a bad idea. You never know when you might need a quick escape route and you had better be practiced with the unusual ones!

I needed some of my tools from my table before I started to experiment in linking some of my runes together for the ninja enchantment. When I heard several different voices though, including Makarov's in very serious tones, I backtracked hastily before I could read what was happening-

 _ **It is a conference of several of the more powerful guild masters. They are assembling a combined team of four guilds to strike at the Oracion Seis, a dark guild that worked in conjunction with the Tower of Heaven. Makarov's contribution is Team Natsu.**_

-but because it involved those people, there was no real way of avoiding catching on.

I sighed, sitting down on the upper ledge of the guild hall roof.

Now that I had read that, I was also feeling Mira being on guard at the door to keep people from entering and disturbing the guild masters as they discussed logistics, where to meet and what role their wizards would play in the conflict. I'd flown in from the forest where I had been testing chakra walking on solids and liquids and had only come back for my etching tools to begin making the spell totem.

I also read, without being able to stop, that five of the members of the six overall wizards who made up Oracion Seis had been former slaves in the Tower, like Erza and Jellal. But their magic had manifested, so they had simply been slipped out quietly and were given specialized...conditioning in accordance with their magic to turn them into useful pawns. No doubt, had they been able to subdue Erza after her fighting spirit was roused and her magic active, she would have met the same fate.

But she had escaped that life.

They hadn't been so lucky.

I had a feeling, though, that this brush with her past wouldn't shake Erza nearly as much as the first one had.

I rose, calling out my wings to fly to my apartment and pretend that I hadn't uncovered a covert plan. I'd tell the Master later, and he'd roll his eyes and grumble about my Story Magic making it impossible to keep anything a secret. He wouldn't tell me to keep it quiet, because he already knew that I would until he gave the word to talk about it. And I'd ask him about what information they had about the Oracion Seis to see if I had uncovered anything they didn't already know.

 _It's been a busy few months._

Lucy had joined up, and that seemed to have been the signal for everything in the country to go crazy. If there was a diabolical evil scheme going on, then Fairy Tail would trip on it and usually end up breaking it in the process. It wasn't even just Team Natsu. Team Shadowgear had been hired by a minor noble family to clear some pests from their garden. They had ended up discovering and dismantling an ancient curse that had plagued the family for generations. The Thunder Legion had been deployed multiple times in the last few months to target smaller Dark Guilds and take them out of the game.

And then there was that moment when Lucy took out the Naked Mummy guild single-handedly because she thought they had kidnapped her father.

 _And yet she somehow still seems to think she's weak..._

Everything was stirring, picking up for the climax.

But this wasn't the end game. The big conflict was still a ways away, I felt that. But even a tornado has to start from a few breezes. And these little incidents were here, and would probably only get bigger.

-vVv-

Once I got my lacrima, which I had been able to keep from my job with Mystogan, I found a secure place and started to see how I could tap into the energy it contained and transfer it to my newest project.

The staff had worked as it had in spite of the low power I'd sacrificed to make it. But I suspected that it was only because the story of Gandalf was known by many people. As far as I could tell, the more people knew and were invested in a story, the less energy I needed to use to power items based on it.

That meant that I had to find a way to publish even more of the stories in my head in order to utilize their full potential. At least, if I wanted to use totems based on specific characters. For my runes, which were a little more versatile, a story only I knew seemed to be good enough.

So, I wanted to use these lacrima I had salvaged to see if I couldn't make a stronger enchantment. If I gave it a higher overall energy potential, then I could use some of my kinetic charging runes and give it an extra way to get its energy back. Or, once I got good enough, make it self sustaining entirely.

 _Ok, the kinetic runes will work for this because parts of it rely on combat which requires a lot of movement. I can get the physical power from them. And since I'll be using it to move, generating more kinetic force, maybe have a couple copied runes so they get recharged even as I'm using some. Link them into a deliberate chain?_

 _...Maybe there's a variant I can write that will store magic power to the same effect so long as my control is so lousy. A way to recycle extra energy that would otherwise be wasted until I get good enough to not have any spillover. It would probably have some of the same components as the kinetic seal...Maybe..._

-vVv-

I went to the guild hall after about an hour, giving them plenty of time to finish their discussion.

Makarov took one look at me as he sorted through his papers and sighed.

"You heard everything, didn't you." I hung my head, embarrassed in spite of myself.

"I didn't hear anything. I just saw you were in a teleconference and who with and the magic supplied the rest of it." The little old man groaned, massaging his temples.

"Girl, I know you are doing your best to control that skill of yours. But what you once could only read with a touch of your hand, you can now read with a glance at who is involved. It's growing stronger."

"I know. I'm trying to stay on top of it."

"I'm starting to wonder if you ever will." Makarov said, leaning back from his typewriter with a sigh. "You may as well have been born in this guild. You've been pulled into a group that is constantly seeking the never ending mystery of adventure. And I've watched as time goes on that you adopt that mindset more and more, in no small part thanks to the company you keep." I couldn't tell if that was a chastisement for hanging around the most destructive group of nutjobs in the guild or not... Makarov was still speaking, reflection and thought in his tone.

"I've concluded that living that ideal of adventure is something that you've internalized. And have done so to such an extent that your magic responds. As all magic is based on desire, it takes your desire to know, to seek and to learn: And it gives you information of things otherwise kept secret. Even if simply knowing it could endanger you." And I knew there were some things that I could get in trouble over just by knowing about them.

"When you say it like that, it makes it sound like I go looking for trouble to get mixed up in it for the thrills." He gave me a look that was both weary and warm.

"Were you almost anyone else, I would say that is precisely what you do. But just the fact that you recognize what it could potentially lead to makes me far less worried about you having access to this knowledge, and all but sweeps away any concern that that is what is driving your power to develop in this direction.

"Whatever your desire is, whatever it is that makes you continue to rise in the morning and keep living, it isn't a desire to prove your strength, win fame or anything that easily leads to rashness. That would indicate a very hasty, temporary personality, which you clearly don't have inspite of your age. If you did, you would have manifested your power in a far more spontaneous and erratic way. Almost any way except for Rune Magic. It requires a great deal of preparation and patience and does not suffer fools easily. And you-." He poked my forehead with his ridiculous smiley face staff, "-are no fool, your preferred company notwithstanding." _Ok, that was a very deliberate compliment to me, and also a very flat insult to the people I hang out with..._

And I couldn't even protest him calling my friends stupid. I had no leg to stand on there.

What Master said about Rune Magic was certainly true. All the ways runes could go wrong were somewhat terrifying to think about. It took incredible, painstaking and grueling effort and attention to detail.

Magic was all about desire. What you most wanted, deep inside yourself... It also, on some level, involved a willingness to sacrifice your life for what you wanted, if necessary. Magic was inside everyone on some level, and we did use what was in our cores it to survive. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible for a non-wizard to contract Magic Deficiency Disease. And while it was far rarer for a civilian to get it, they could still get it!

This core was your personal store of magic. And you had to want something enough to open part of yourself to the magic around you, give up part of yourself. And when someone did that and did it with enough focus and force...For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. There was suddenly a void in you. And since ethernano permeated everything in this world naturally, it would come in and try to repopulate what you had forcibly vacated. The ethernano coming into you could only enter through the door your desire had opened. When it did, it crystalized it within you, leaving it as an open passage. Keeping it open after that first manifestation was a matter of practice and continued will. But it would always be there.

But that first desire...that first time, that was critical. And it left me wondering.

Natsu said he and Happy had found me barely conscious and alone in a forest a short way away from a dark guild he had stumbled across. Since he wasn't much for talking when roused, he had simply beaten them all silly rather than investigate where I had come from, or how they had gotten a hold of me since they had apparently been searching for me.

Something about my encounter with Natsu and Happy had probably triggered my first use of magic. So what had I wanted so desperately back then that it had made me into what I was now?


	21. Snakes are cool

I had the weirdest feeling following me around all day after Team Natsu left for their rendezvous with the other wizards. Lamia Scale, Cait Shelter and Blue Pegasus were all sending someone to play a part in this mission, but Fairy tail had sent the most. We were after all the strongest guild. As a general rule, if a problem wasn't solved yet, then you hadn't thrown enough Fairy Tail wizards at it yet! I had gotten a glimpse of who was going to be sent only after they were already gone, otherwise I'd have warned Erza that she was about to have an encounter with Ichiya...

Not even children were safe from him. I had never met him, since Mirajane was careful to not bring me along to her photo shoots if he was going to be there. But I could sense that not even my age would keep me safe from his...harmless yet utterly nauseating attention.

But I still felt strange. Something was itching in the center of my back, awkward and persistent. Almost like someone was...

 _ **Watching**._

I was in my room in Fairy Hills, getting ready to go help with the lunch rush at the hall when I sensed a plan.

Ever since Laxus had pulled his city wide stunt at the Harvest Festival, I had been extremely sensitive to plans made around me. Especially if they involved me. And this one was pretty heavily colored in my head, so it was a direct involvement too. But it wasn't coming from anyone I knew, as far as I could tell, and it's end goal was unclear.

 _Hmm...What can make that plan change?_

I felt the charm spell a mile away. A travelling vendor was handing out candied apples to a horde of eager children. The suggestion was there to go over and dig my teeth into one of the sticky sweets myself. But I stiffened my spine against it and kept walking.

I sensed the plan shift. The charm spell increased in its potency.

 _Targeted on me specifically._ But the kids were starting to...get sleepy.

As my foot hit the ground, I saw a flash.

 _Two men on either side of the road moving in unison to slap a bag over me and activate the paralysis runes on it._

 _They're kidnapping children in broad daylight...Why? Why take more than just me?_

" _Faster than a speeding bullet."_ I whispered, the script winking into life on my legs. I had to get to the guild hall. Now! These people were either being very well paid to come and pull this in Fairy Tail's home city, or they were doing it as a feint for something else entirely.

The mental speed up that this enhancement gave me left me with a lot of spare time to think even as I blurred through the air, easily dodging the sack that seemed to come down on where I had been in slow motion.

I only kept the enhancement for a short burst. Even with shock absorbers handling most of the impact of each step, it was hurting my feet to run that fast. It gave me enough of a head start that I was able to evade my pursuers, but not by much. I heard someone yelling behind me. The plan I had sensed unravelled, warping and shifting into something new.

I had some reporting to do and fast!

-vVv-

Makarov's reaction time was everything it should be. As soon as I entered the hall, I bypassd everyone, even running over Elfman's back to reach him as soon as I could.

"Someone is selling drugged goods to the city's children...!"

He rose then, his Titan magic flaring around him in a heavy cloak.

"My children." His voice rumbled through the air, loud and very attention grabbing. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at him, because he was being serious and you didn't screw around when he was wearing his Guild Master hat.

"Someone has made a terrible mistake. Go and correct their error. Teach them we will not tolerate kidnapping in our home!"

I had seen Fairy Tail when motivated.

But the rate at which magic pressure spiked and the hall emptied was still impressive. I was already sitting down, looking over the map of the guild, focused on finding every enemy agent in the city and passing information to Warren to coordinate with the rest of the guild. They were tricky and hard to pin down even with my magic, since I really didn't have a good starting point.

 _Reading stories is all well and good, but I have to know which book they're in first..._

This was harder and took a lot more concentration than when I had done the same thing against the Thunder Legion. There I at least had somewhere to start, a relationship with them to build from.

" _Got a name for these clowns."_ Elfman reported on the network. " _Call themselves Grey Chimera."_

Warren whipped through some notes, our records on the known dark guilds.

" _Got em. Mercenaries in every sense of the word. They only went dark a few years ago, something about the bank they were working with dealing in dirty money. They were blacklisted by the Magic Council and have only been digging themselves in deeper since then."_

"How come they haven't been caught?"

" _They've got some kind of teleportation spell that lets them get out of almost anything!"_ Bisca sounded annoyed. " _We had a whole dozen of them pinned down, but they've gotten out and scattered, we've only got eyes on four of them now!"_

Untraceable teleportation that could easily be used by multiple individuals? Yeah, I could see how a dark guild that wanted to stay free would capitalize on that hard core. But if they had gotten so many of them clear, why weren't they withdrawing? They did not want a pitched battle with Fairy Tail, otherwise they'd have set up ambushes, or done something to draw us out of Magnolia. Instead they had come here. They had kicked up a fuss and gotten our attention and they were now leading our members on a giant wild goose chase.

I marked the location of the other eight wizards on the map and had Warren project them out.

 _ **They're buying time. This isn't their main plan. This is a ruse.**_

I heard that clear and plain in the back of my mind.

"Tell everyone to stay sharp." I said suddenly, sitting up straighter. "This is cover for something else. They want everyone possible outside and divided."

"Very clever." The unknown voice was a whisper behind me and I instantly dropped, a stunning spell flying to my lips.

" _We've got one in the guild hall!"_ Warren called over the channel, hands raising and his magic circles appearing.

Warren's close combat abilities weren't the best in the guild. But he had enough psychic clout to send someone to the psych ward at this range.

My evasive roll would have been the right call...If the floor hadn't opened up beneath me and swallowed me up. I didn't even have time to scream.

I landed in a sack, the same kind of sack I had dodged on the way to the hall after spotting the Chimera's at their distraction.

"We've got her. Withdraw!"

A cold fist closed over my throat as my magic spoke again.

 _ **The kidnapping of the other kids was a front. The whole goal was to get you.**_

 _But why?!_ I almost screamed this as reflexive terror started to claw at my composure. _What did I do?! WHY!?_

In the Tower of Heaven, I'd been taken as a hostage to force Erza into compliance. This time, I was being taken for my own merit.

 _Natsu, Gray, Mystogan, Freed, Erza, someone! Help me!_

It was getting really annoying to keep having fear try to get in the way of my thoughts. I knew I couldn't get rid of it, fear was a natural reaction and it was one I felt was currently justified. But could it...not get in the way?

I imagined the fear as a negative dull greyness swirling around me like a chaotic tornado. I was in the middle of that storm of emotion, but...

 _Storms have eyes. Hurricanes have that space in their centers that is always clear and calm._

So...if I fed this tornado thing something even more substantial than fear, would it turn into the hurricane I needed? It was a strange thought, but I figured I didn't really have a lot to lose. If I didn't find some way to think up a way around this thing, I'd just collapse into crying little girl mode. And that wouldn't be helpful.

So I started digging through my mind for other emotions to add to the swirl around me. Some more fuel for the fire.

Oddly enough, the first thing that came to my mind after fear was anger.

This was the third time I had been held against my will the past two months. And I was even less able to do something about it. I was so sick of being a kid by this point.

 _Which would be better? Kidnapped child or damsel in distress? At this point in my magical experience, I'd be a damsel no matter if I was older or not._

That brought up a nice current of exasperation and disgust. I mixed it together with the anger, see righteous indignation, and let it bleed out into the emotional storm.

The heat from the anger tempered the cold fear, and the contrast made the whole thing grow, and pick up speed.

 _OK! Now that I have that, I can focus and think: Why do they want me? Who would know anything about me for them to want in the first place?_

 _ **Jellal knew about you.**_

...

That was true. Jellal, while he was still being possessed, had known about my magic and thought it interesting enough to be worth testing. So how had he known?

It was a fact of life that the magic guilds had information networks that country spymasters would kill for. Blue Pegasus actually traded on that kind of thing chiefly, their wizards were very talented at getting information in unusual or tight situations. Makarov was friends with several other guild masters, including Master Bob, and that meant we had a fairly open relationship when it came to information. I supposed dark guilds would have a similar thing going for them.

 _ **Especially among the Balam Alliance.**_

I felt myself being moved, with strange periods of stopping.

 _Teleportation._

I needed to know where I was, and where I was going. And then I needed an owl, or moth, or something to get word out to my friends about where I was.

And I needed to keep thinking clearly enough to cause trouble for whoever was responsible for this.

 _First thing I'm doing when I get home: Making a Pensieve. If I keep getting kidnapped, I may as well be able to pick through the experience later to figure out how best to improve._

Given the trend of recent events, being abducted was apparently going to be a thing for me to watch out for. At least until I got badass enough to protest it effectively.

 _Ok, first Pensieve, then all the freaking training I can get. I am sick of being a victim._

 _-_ vVv-

My captors didn't say much, and I didn't try to get anything out of them. I trusted my magic way more than anything they might bluster.

I had quickly run an assessment of what resources I had on me.

I had my bracers, each capable of anchoring three small spells, or one large one for long term use. I hadn't been gagged. I may have a dual type pen in my pocket too. All things considered, it wasn't too bad a deal.

So far though, all I had gotten from the man carrying me was that he was hungry, and planning on how to spend his pay for this job.

I dug at the idea of the job, who had given him his orders for one...

 _ **Angelo. Guild master.**_

Angelo was a man with a sharp, pale face. His eyes never seemed to stay in one place, and he was constantly moving with a quick step. Always evading, always moving. A survivor in every sense of the word.

 _Bet he's the one that they got the teleportation spell from._

 _ **Mid range teleportation. Untraceable by current means. Max distance of 30 miles. 24 seconds of cool down for every 10 mile jump. Needs a marker to jump to at distances greater than about one mile.**_

OK, that was some nice information. It meant that while we were covering ground at a very quick rate I still had time before we got to wherever we were going.

Wherever that was.

And right on cue, my magic alerted me.

 _ **To a drop point between Grey Chimera and the Oracion Seis.**_

And then new information started to pour into my mind.

About the members of the Oracion Seis, the six wizards and the weird talking stick. About their origins.

And right over all of it was a big black blank spot that I had seen before.

I saw it every time I tried to look into my own past.

 _Ok...heading for a big fight, because there's no way this isn't going to cause a fight. Erza, Natsu, Gray and Lucy are all there, so that's good, I'll have someone to save my sorry butt. But...there's history there too._

 _My history._

And knowing that made it partly terrifying, and partly thrilling to be kidnapped.

 _I need therapy._

Travelling only took a few hours.

We stopped and I heard my carrier was breathing heavily. The spell he had been using to teleport us was clearly remarkably energy efficient, since he had been able to use it so many times in a row. If he was starting to get tired, we must have gone quite a long distance. And of course he was running between every spell. That too.

"This job had better pay out." Someone grumbled. "Word says the other fairies are going crazy on any other gang they can get their hands on."

"It'll pay. By the time they catch up, we'll be in Bosco and out of their reach." _Ok, not sure how many connections we have in Bosco, but definitely making a note of that._

"Is their man coming?"

"Shut it and wait." Fae felt something prod her side sharply and she flinched in pain. "Good, brat's alive. You didn't rough her up too much? He wanted her unharmed. We want as much cash out of this as we can get. It's gonna be the last deal we get in Fiore."

I didn't know why the Oracion Seis wanted me, but I at least knew that I had friends nearby...If I could get my hands on something to send a message to them, then I would be alright...Hopefully.

I sensed the members of Grey Chimera shifting uneasily. Someone had joined them.

 _ **Code name, Midnight. Actual name, Macbeth. Typically floats around on his carpet in place of actually walking.**_

"Is that her?" A voice, Midnight I assumed, asked.

"Yes." The sack around me shifted, changing, warping...

 _ **Reflector Magic, allows him to change, or warp the state of objects and materials.**_

It certainly seemed to work on the cloth around me to tie me up neatly and efficiently. The smart thing to do would be to stay as quiet as possible and not draw their ire... Midnight had moved on from me and was saying something to the other wizards around me. I was just staring at him...

Black hair on top, but clean white hair beneath. Black, wavy, white, straight, all on the same head with no easily seen difference in hair quality...

 _I am occasionally accused of being smart. And I don't always live up to it._

"Is your hair like that naturally or do you bleach part of it?" Apparently the question came in a tense moment of the conversation since I had roughly 10 seconds of total stillness while everyone present looked at me with blank expressions. It certainly seemed to catch Midnight off-guard.

"What?"

"If it's bleach, what do you moisturize with?" The wizard from Grey Chimera suddenly looked quite nervous.

"I assure you, the target suffered no damage in retrieval or transportation." With that, my attention shifted to the man holding me even in my improvised bindings. I deliberately made my eyes glow a little and a little unfriendly smile crossed my face.

"Which means my whole mental state is the fault of hands down the craziest and arguably the strongest official guild in the country that you have made extremely angry." I told him, expression never shifting. "Not to mention any of their allied guilds, who all have very strong feelings on kidnapping." Fairy Tail may hold the top spot in the country, but the other guilds that Makarov associated with weren't slouches in a straight fight either. They just weren't as good at it.

"Shut up brat. Your friends aren't coming to save you." _Lie._

I didn't even need my magic to know that. I did delve into it for the history of how long it typically took our alliance to respond to situations like this.

My eyes flashed brighter as I looked at the man.

"Based on past performance, the projected outcome is as follows given that Fairy Tail will have been alerted to my kidnapping instantly: Within two hours, Blue Pegasus will have your location and destination. Their specialists in the Rune Knights will send word ahead of you to freeze any chance of getting asylum." I didn't mention I already knew where they were going... Why give everything away?

"Given Fairy Tail's state of high alert, and their known reputation for dealing absolute vengeance on those who harm their own, average response time is cut down by 80%. They will already have contacted Lamia Scale to spread the word and mobilize search and rescue parties. Meaning that once Blue Pegasus has your destination these teams will be sent to scour all possible routes on which you might be travelling. Your guilds estimated chances of survival once caught, 63%." My smile pulled wider a fraction. "Estimated chance of escape: Negligible."

I could tell the wizard wanted to smack me to shut me up. My words, simple, unenhanced words, while not striking terror into the hearts of those around me, were certainly unsettling them. They had thought I was crying, or having some other normal childish reaction to being abducted. Instead, I had apparently been sitting the bag as they carried me away, reasoning out how long it would be before they caught the heat for their stunt.

 _Yeah, might be a little freaky all things considered._

He pulled me up by the front of my bindings, veins standing out on his forehead as he glowered down at me.

"You...!" I felt myself get tugged in his grasp, the sensation of Midnight's, Macbeth's Reflector Magic twisting something-

There came a sickening snap and a strangled cry of pain.

 _ **Basic manipulation to twist the sleeve and gauntlet into breaking his arm.**_

"I think that concludes our business for today." Midnight said as I floated over to him, under the influence of his spell. He didn't sound as though he had just broken a man's arm. He didn't sound affected at all. There came the sound of something jingling. "The bonus is there for delivering her in the promised condition." Then I was placed on the magic carpet and we were rising into the air.

The phrasing of what Midnight had said in parting kept on ringing in my head as significant and I kept after the thought until my magic revealed something for me to use.

 _ **Psychometry. They want someone with Psychometry.**_

And all the things that I could read with my magic...Power sets, skills, abilities, weaknesses, structural and organizational flaws. Personalities, lies, skeletons in closets. Cover stories meant nothing to me, and it wouldn't be long before everyone knew it. And oh could that sort of reputation be capitalized on. My word would be absolute truth and no one would think to dispute it.

Or, depending on who was behind me, they wouldn't dare dispute it _._

I could wreak absolute havoc in any organized body in the span of a few hours and the right motivation. I knew it. Makarov knew it. This was why he hadn't given me a guild mark while I was still trying to get a lid on my power. Or at least on my ability to cope with whatever I might see. My guildmate's pasts were strewn with roses, you might say. Their stems primarily, with precious few flowers to make up for the pain. The Tower of Heaven had reinforced to me that I needed to wait before going out into the wide world. Or accepting jobs that had a lot of person to person interaction. If I didn't want to end up a sobbing wreck from all the vicarious living I was experiencing through my magic I was going to need mental defenses the size of a continent.

This was also why I hadn't pressed for a mark and full wizard status though part of me really wanted it.

Midnight had fallen asleep even as the carpet flew. But his manipulation spell still lay over my bindings. So the idea of throwing myself off the flying carpet and rerouting my falling failsafe seals would have to be scrapped.

 _I need to touch him._

I was still lacking a lot of information about what they actually planned to do with me. The best way I could think of getting that right now was by getting some kind of contact with him. He was the only source of information I had right now...

...

Or was he?

I eyed the carpet that was pressed against my cheek. Midnight's history, such as I had seen so far, indicated that he usually travelled by carpet. That meant that it might have been around when plans were being discussed...

I closed my eyes, focused on the past...on reading the story of this magical item that was my current transport. It was only a piece of scenery in the story. A prop at best. But it had still been there...

Information started to pour into my mind. It was hard to decipher. The carpet had no intelligence of it's own, nor did it have any actual means of recording information. Unlike when I tried to read a book's history, there was no psychic imprint of information to let knowledge linger. A book was meant to retain information. A carpet, not so much. It took some effort to get anything worthwhile out of my half nap time, but i learned a few useful things.

The biggest, most worrisome piece of information was that Cobra, as he was called, could read thoughts. He could literally hear them, and pick all sorts of things out of a person's head. So, even if I kept mum and didn't say anything, they would still get information. Chiefly about my friends, who they would be fighting.

 _Ok, not acceptable._ Sure, Natsu's motion sickness would probably get abused. It happened at least once in every fight. But the personal wounds that my friends had that I was privy to? The secrets of their past, to just fall into someone else's hands? Especially those of an enemy?

 _Ok, ways to BS a mindreader. The Harpell method won't work here. He could still hear it..._

From what I had read about Brain, Midnight's father and the leader of the Oracion Seis, he was an accomplished wizard. He was, as his name implied, a very smart man. He wasn't the most powerful fighter, but he knew the basics of at least a dozen types of magic. He was also the one who had taught all of the other members of his guild how to use magic, having raised them together since childhood. Someone who could effectively teach such a wide variety of wizards to use their powers to this extent was not someone to be trifled with. Nor was it someone I wanted to be near without a plan. Especially because he had also fallen out of the crazy, evil, mad scientist tree, hitting every single branch on the way down.

Most importantly for me since I was about to become his prisoner, he knew any number of flexible, useful counterspells for just about anything under the sun. It was how he had kept the other wizards in his guild under his thumb. He knew ways to counter each and every one of their magic's passive and active abilities.

Whatever my chosen form of defense was, it couldn't be something he could reach. If he could get his hands on it, or see it, he would be able to undo it given time, and probably not much of it. It would have to be entirely inside my head. Not being able to use a literal written component would suck... and speaking it would have almost the same effect since the script would almost certainly be visible. But having my almost encyclopedic knowledge of my friends be used against them would be much worse.

My reading of the carpet had gotten me the code names and general skillsets of the remaining members of the dark guild. Most importantly, I knew the range which Cobra could hear thoughts. I wanted to have my shield up by the time we got into range.

 _If I was an adult, this wouldn't happen, right? Or would it just be even more frustrating because of the unspoken assumption that grown ups are supposed to be able to take care of themselves?_

The motion of the rug lulled me into a trance that was most helpful as I erected my defenses. Since the biggest threat to my secrets appeared to be Cobra's ability to literally hear thoughts, I figured creating a literal barrier of sounds and noises in my head, some of them quite grating, would be a sufficient deterrent for passive skimming from him. Beyond that, I tried consciously to think in pictures and feelings as opposed to words with sounds.

It would take part of my concentration, taking up space in my head that I would otherwise need for spells, provided I didn't get a restrainer slapped on me as soon as I arrived. But I would take that risk. There was no real chance of my being able to free myself of my own volition. I would need outside help in order to escape.

I stayed still and quiet as the rug landed.

"How was the handover?"

"No problems." Midnight replied.

Brain didn't look like a madman, but he did feel like one.

 _ **Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde.**_

I could infer what was actually in Brain's mind from there.

He was examining me with a sort of professional interest, reading me in a way that I couldn't quite keep up with.

"At least they kept you in good condition." He said finally, confusing me to no end. "Midnight, put her under."

-vVv-

Some time later I felt the sleep spell fade. Thanks to my relationship with Mystogan, I had practice forcing myself to think even though a magical haze, so I began taking stock of my surroundings.

There were enchanted manacles on my wrist that would keep me from using spells that needed more than a certain amount of magic power. They couldn't cut me off completely from my magic if they wanted me to stay alive. In fact, having it down so low would have kept an adult unconscious, but my child's body needed much less energy. Even this tiny amount let me break through the remnants of Midnight's spell and wake up fully.

Then I heard a hissing sound close by.

I turned my head to see a bored looking man with sharp elf like ears staring off into the distance while a massive purple snake slithered around me.

"Don't try and run, etc, etc, Cubellios's venom is deadly and he will bite."

 _ **Cobra, though his real name is Eric.**_

He looked at me then, his boredom vanishing.

"That's not you."

 _Activate._

The blur of meaningless white noise started to buzz through my mind. A pain to focus through, but better than just letting him hear everything I was thinking. I sat up slowly from where I was laying

"Now what are you doing?"

"I don't like eavesdroppers."

I then ignored him in favor of looking at the snake and focusing...

 _ **Cubellios is female and actually human.**_

Huh.

 _...Why?_

 _ **Magic.**_

 _Of course._

I looked at Cobra, feeling the rundown of his past pour through my head.

From what I could see, he seemed like a...decent guy. Growing up as he had had pretty much ruined him from ever having a chance of being 100% nice, but he was far from a monster. And since his whole thing was about loyalty to his only friend, Cubellios and wanting to understand her...

 _Parseltongue it is then._

In the story, Harry had always been able to speak the language just by focusing on snakes and talking. It was something entirely unconscious for him. So doing the same...

It took a few nonsensical mutters and Cobra looking away with an annoyed look before the hiss finally emerged from my lips. And while I heard a hiss, I also understood what I was trying to say.

 **:Hello:**

The snake froze in its way around me, staring at me in absolute shock.

 **:You...I understand you:** Her voice was female, young and gentle, but it was warped somehow under a thick layer of Transformation Magic.

I could read the spell on her easily. The spell was all that there was to her right now. She had been very young when she was first transformed. There wasn't much of her history where she hadn't been a snake. I couldn't even see her name underneath the identity of Cubellios. If something happened to force the spell to show itself, I'd probably be able to take a crack at undoing the spell myself. But as it was, it might be better for someone with more practice to handle it.

 **:And I understood you! Now that we can talk: Will you please not attack me if I move around a bit? I won't try to escape:** The big snake's eyes narrowed briefly, wondering if I was trying to trick her.

 **:My friend wishes to keep you here:** And her priority was helping her friend. There really wasn't much human thought underneath there right now... Her concept of loyalty and friendship was really the only thing that had remained intact after years of conforming to a snake's mindset.

 **:And I'm not foolish enough to try to escape on my own. I'm waiting for my friends to come and rescue me. Which they will. Trying to escape alone would only result in my being overpowered:** Like I said, that would be foolish. And snakes were not foolish. Appealing to that trait ought to help...

Cubellios wound her way closer to me, tongue tasting my hair gently.

 **:That makes sense. If you do not try to escape, I will not hurt you. You may move, but you will stay close to me:**

 **:I accept your terms. Thank you!:** I patted Cubellios's nose before looking to see a very confused Cobra staring at me both.

"Cubellios, what are you doing?" The big snake flicked me into the air and onto her back. She regarded Cobra with a smug look on her face.

"We had a nice conversation." I replied. "I'm going to assume you didn't know that she's actually a girl."

"What?"

"So long as I'm near her, she'll let me wander around."

"Woah, woah, woah, back up: Since when can you talk to snakes?" That must not have been in the information they had on me then.

"As of about three minutes ago." I said, folding my arms. I glanced through what he did know about me, and proceeded from there. "One of my stories has a character who can talk to snakes, so I can do it too."

Raging jealousy flashed on Cobra's face as Cubellios carried me around the base, a clearing backed against a large rock formation.

"Teach me the spell." I lifted my wrist that had the magic suppressor on it.

"No can do, unless you feel like taking this off." And I was pretty sure Brain had explicitly said that I wasn't supposed to lose the shackles until he was there to supervise me personally.

The Poison Dragon Slayer glared at me, (thank goodness his magic was not visual or I would already be dead) clearly unhappy. The large reptile shifted, sensing his mood.

 **:What is wrong with my friend? I cannot understand what he says in your language, but I smell he is unhappy:**

 **:He wants to speak with you like I am, but my power is being contained so I can't help him:**

Cubellios settled into a loose coil with me in the center, eyes regarding both me and her friend. She was thinking hard as well.

 **:The man with the half mad soul will be angry if your power is unleashed:** Cubellios was loyal only to Cobra, but she was afraid of Brain. She wouldn't cross him for anything without a very good reason to believe he would lose the ensuing fight.

 _Well, so much for that hope._

I had half wondered if Cobra's desire to speak to his animal partner would overwhelm his reason and get him to take off the manacle. And barring that, Cubellios likely had the same desire to speak to him and could probably get it off with some of her acidic poison.

The snake turned her head to look at me, a human hope shining in her eyes.

 **:Little one...will you speak for me to my friend?:**

Cubellios had undergone more than ten years of forced silence. She couldn't confide her human emotions to anyone, and had thus lost most of her humanity. Her only solace was Cobra's companionship.

 **:What do you want to say to him?:**

"Cubellios says: ' _Please don't be upset.'_ "


	22. Project Garden

**:What is the matter?:** The snake asked, still curled around me. I fell silent, frustration and anger trying to choke my throat. Or maybe that was just tears. Cubellios had been waiting for years and years to speak to her friend and now that something it was possible, he wasn't listening!

I had been arguing with Cobra for at least 20 minutes about whether or not I could actually talk to Cubellios. He had gotten fed up and just stalked off, close enough to still keep an eye on me, but clearly showing he was done talking.

She had told me all kinds of information to pass on as proof that I was communicating with her. But he simply thought I was reading his past. Which I was as well, but my magic was simply verifying each fact as true instead of digging for more.

I replied with a sigh.

 **:He doesn't believe I actually understand you. He thinks I am reading his life's story with my magic:**

Cubellios let out an annoyed hiss, her head rising threateningly into a striking position.

 **:I have waited and wished to speak to him since I first met him. And now when my words finally can reach him, he ignores them?:** She quickly slithered after him. **:Come, little one. We will find some way for your words to reach him. I have waited too long for this day for his stubbornness to ruin it:**

Cubellios was remarkably fast on land for a snake of her size. Moving like a python, she slid into a tree over Cobra's head and dropped onto him from above, easily tangling him in her powerful coils. Dragon Slayer strength or not, he wasn't getting out of her hold.

"Cubellios, what are you doing!?"

"Trying to make you listen." I replied, coming up beside them.

He looked at me with murder in his eyes.

"Kid...I don't know what kind of spell you're using and I don't care how much you're worth to Brain. If you don't take off whatever spell you snuck onto Cubellios, _I will rip you apart._ "

I was starting to get annoyed now. And yes, I will admit it, I stomped my foot. I didn't want to get in his face, since breathing out poison was probably something he was quite comfortable with and becoming more and more inclined to do the more I annoyed him.

He was right to be hesitant to trust me.

He had wanted for years to do nothing more than to hear his friend's voice. It had shaped how his natural magic had expressed itself, so it had to have been a pretty strong desire. Now he had been set to babysit a prisoner. And this prisoner had casually revealed that not only did she have the ability that he wanted so badly, but she wasn't going to share it with him.

All in all, it looked like a ploy for me to feed him false information. That, and his automatic reflex of _that's not fair_ kept him from believing me. Plus, I was apparently stealing his best and only friend from him given the way she was acting.

But I kinda lost it on him all the same.

And yeah, this included slapping him, the manacles on my wrist clicking. They were sized for a child, but were still extremely heavy and I was strong for a kid my size.

There was a split second of silence as his eyes widened in bewilderment. His partner hissed in alarm, but didn't react aggressively.

I stared at the fully grown wizard I had just struck, and it was like a dam burst.

"Look at me, idiot! I'm a nine year old girl, not even a full wizard. I'm just someone your guild decided to kidnap and sprint across most of the country and I don't even know why! I just know all of you could kill me without any effort. I have barely any access to the only thing that could save my life and that's pretty terrifying!" The tears were starting to fall from my eyes as the days events started to catch up.

When I got up this morning, I had felt on edge, but I had expected it to be some bogus cursed job or maybe an obsessive fan trying to stalk Mira. Not being kidnapped and run across the country and then put in the power of some of the most dangerous dark wizards in the country.

The floodgates were open, and my words kept pouring out, hot, angry and tearful.

"There are two reasons I'm still able to talk without breaking down, crying. First, the same mental exercise I'm using to keep you from reading my mind is forcing my thoughts and emotions to stay structured and under control. And second: Because I know my friends will come and rescue me." This was fact and I knew that Fairy Tail would come. They were my family and they always had come through when I was in trouble before. This time was no different. Just saying that helped me ground myself. Cobra was looking at me with an oddly stricken look on his face.

 _ **Crying children remind him of his own upbringing.**_ And that apparently was a bad thing since it was compounding with him just getting angrier.

"The kind of faith I have in my guild is the same bond Cubellios has with you. She's not doing this because I asked her to and there's no way I could have made her. There's not a compulsion spell on this planet strong enough to override the friendship you share!"

My chest was heaving as I glared down at the still livid wizard, he was inhaling, ready to breathe some kind of highly toxic compound at me.

"I'm telling you all this because she asked me to translate for her. She's been forced to be silent for years, waiting for some chance to come up to finally tell you how she felt and what she was thinking. She wants to talk to you as badly as you want to hear her." I don't know what it was that caught Cobra's attention, but he stalled, only a faint wisp of poison escaping into the air. Cubellios hissed scoldingly, striking her head forward as though to bite, but only butting him sharply with her head.

 **:Do not harm the hatchling! She is a captive and is not obligated to speak for me. Do her no harm for doing me a kindness!:**

The sharp featured wizard looked from his pet to me and then back.

"Is she telling the truth...?" He asked her finally. Cubellios rolled her eyes in a startlingly human gesture and nodded, loosening her coils to let him go.

Cobra then sat there, chin in his hand. Then he finally looked at me.

"You are a pain in the ass, you know that? You coulda just let your shield drop and I could hear what she's saying directly." His impulsive anger appeared to have abated.

 _Finally!_

I sat down, cross legged and gave him a flat look.

"I feel about my friends the same way you feel about her." I gestured at the snake between us. "No way am I letting you dig through my thoughts about them." Cobra shrugged, settling back and looking at me with new eyes.

"Fair enough, I guess. So, Celeste, wasn't it? And you somehow speak snake. What other languages do you know?"

"Considering that about an hour ago I couldn't even do that much, I honestly don't know."

 _What is my life when I'm having a civil conversation with my warden?_

-vVv-

Only a short time later, I needed to revise the thought.

 _My life is utter madness: Why? I'm playing Scrabble with my captor in the dirt._ As far as babysitters went, Cobra wasn't half bad. Just a little...awkward with kids. He kept on trying to cheat with alternate spellings.

 _And now he's teaching me cuss words in other languages because my magic can translate them. I completely revise my thinking that he's a good babysitter._

"You aren't actually supposed to be awake yet." Cobra told me after a few hours of conversation. Some of it our own, some of it relayed between him and Cubellios.

I had explained that she was a girl, after which he apologized always referring to her as a boy. And I had told a little bit about the snake language. Since it was a product of my Story Magic, I wasn't sure if there was some kind of equivalent in Earthland specifically for snakes. Lisanna had been able to understand animals in general, even if she hadn't been able to directly speak their language. But that probably came with her magic.

And that brought us to the topic of personal magic, and Cobra's surprise at my having shaken off the sleep spell so quickly.

"So why am I here anyway?" I asked as frankly as I could. Cobra grinned, flashing his unusually sharp teeth. He clearly recognized that I'd changed the subject on purpose. _Just because I'm a kid doesn't mean I'll let you sneak information out of me that easily._

"How long have you been waiting to ask that?"

"Pretty much from the moment someone grabbed me out of my home, shoved me in a sack and teleported me away." This earned a laugh from the other wizard.

"Well, hate to disappoint kid. All I know is Brain's got something in mind for you, he's been keeping an eye on you for years. After the Tower of Heaven fell, he stepped up the plans to get you out."

He said pretty explicitly that Brain had been aware of me for years. Aware of what I could do.

 _If he only decided to pull me out after the Tower of Heaven, which is my first semi public showing, then he must have wanted to grab me before I got much stronger._

Was it possible that he had been aware of me even before I could remember?

There came a pause in my train of thought, as I waited for my magic to fill in the gaps in the story like it normally did.

But there was only a blank space of nothing. Like there always was whenever I tried to remember past waking up in Porlyusica's hut.

 _I'll take that as a yes, then._

Cubellios nudged me gently.

 **:You are thinking very hard about something:**

I scratched her head gently like she'd told me she liked as I tried to think in snake terms to explain what I was thinking about..

 **:I...hatched twice in a way. Once like everyone else, and then again when I forgot who I was. I chose my own name because I could not recall what my sires named me:**

Cobra watched the interaction with interest as I relayed what I had said.

"You act differently when you're speaking Parseltongue. Like some kinda stuffy old scholar." I shrugged.

"Animals have slang and casual terms like people do, but it's harder to translate because it's mostly body language."

 _ **Brain is coming.**_

My shoulders went stiff and my back automatically straightened and the whisper that clanged like a dissonant grave bell.

This wasn't a fight that was coming on. That would imply I had a chance of doing something against it.

"Something crawl up your back?"

"No." I turned towards the enemy guild master who wasn't even in sight yet. Cobra gave a faint sigh.

"Shame. It's been nice talking to you, kid." _You make it sound like he's going to kill me or something._ Cubellios went very still where she was loosely coiled around Cobra when Brain appeared.

The first thing that registered for me was that his staff was alive. It wasn't moving or talking independently, yes, but it was very much alive.

The second was that he seemed to be waiting for something from me.

"You recognize me." It wasn't a question. I just nodded once. "You will speak when spoken to."

To this, I just glared at him.

I wouldn't be Fairy Tail if I didn't thumb my nose at my captors in some ways. I'd just been lucky that Cobra was laid back enough to roll with the punches instead of getting irreparably angry.

Brain seemed displayed, a frown crossing his features.

"You've gotten defiant. A regrettable side effect of your association with that guild. No matter. Cobra, bring her."

-vVv-

Eric was not a bad person, in his own opinion. He was a survivor.

He didn't enjoy killing people, but as a child it was that or get thrown back into the Tower of Heaven. He and the others had already been long gone from the Tower when young Erza Scarlet almost single handedly led the slaves in a revolution against their masters. The five orphans had commiserated silently that they hadn't had the chance to be part of that rebellion. To even have a wisp of hope for escape...

But now, he had grown up in this life. There was no way out of it. No way to escape Brain. Their 'father'.

Cubellios was definitely subdued and unhappy as Eric picked up the girl, Faerun, and started walking after Brain. She didn't struggle, but she was as taut as a harp string, trembling slightly with nerves and fear. But her eyes were still clear, and the buzz of white noise still masked her thoughts. He wondered if her mental voice sounded any different from her real one. She was good company for a kid. He regretted that she had gotten pulled into this, even though there had been no chance of it being avoided.

His partner nosed the girl gently, a natural, instinctive attempt at offering comfort. The show of affection made him feel odd. Cubellios had never allowed anyone close to her except for him. But this kid she was all over. The things that communication could do...

Brain had been making this plan for several months. Ever since the Tower of Heaven fell, or was torn down rather.

Project Garden, was what he had called it. Something he had set up as a long term investment.

Eric thought of it as the Cuckoo.

Cubellios shifted her head suddenly, tongue flickering out curiously. Eric felt something leave Fae's body. Magic? Was she using magic even with the suppressor on? It was barely anything, it shouldn't have done anything.

Brain started to talk.

"Your host guild is among the most dangerous in Fiore. Your placement among them was unplanned, but most fortuitous."

Cobra looked between Fae and then at his guild master. Brain didn't just give out information unless it was necessary. Everything about their guild, goals, funds, he controlled it all. And now he was just...talking to hear himself?

 _What the hell did you do, kid?_

 _-_ vVv _-_

 _And now he's monologuing. Good to know that works._

I needed more information. And Cobra, while I had gotten some, didn't know what I wanted to have. By virtue of paranoia, Brain would be the only one to have that kind of knowledge. Specifically about why he wanted me here.

I had decided to try and get some information out of him. So I had pictured Brain as the villain of this 'story' and something almost every villain did without fail was monologue about their scheme. Even if Brain didn't let much slip, it could still be in for my magic to read the rest of it. Since so much of my magic was relative based on how I viewed things, a little magical encouragement and Brain was fitting into his role as the Big Bad Evil Guy, helpfully giving plot exposition about his evil scheme.

"About ten years ago, my compatriots and I created a plan. Project Garden. A long term plan to assist us in the ultimate crippling and destruction of the light guilds. Children would be carefully selected, then implanted with recording lacrima. These would be connected to the senses of each child in order to maximize full comprehension. The children themselves would not be aware of this. As far as they knew, they would fall asleep, then wake up a short time later with a headache. The differences in their quality of thinking would be distinct to anyone else, but in children, who would notice that?" _I would._

I had a very bad feeling as to why he was telling me this. And I was fighting my instincts to huddle into Cobra. He may not have been one of my friends, but he certainly was the closest thing to an ally that I had in this situation.

"Thus prepared, the children's magic would be stimulated into awakening, then they would be left in place for wizarding guilds to find them and take them in for training. Even the tiniest seed of magic in a person takes a long time to fully control. They would spend a minimum of two years in the very heart of these guilds and interacting with the key members that formed their spine. All the while, the lacrima would be recording, seeing far more than the child could comprehend." Brain looked back at me with a horrifyingly genuine smile. "I take it you've already realized why I'm telling you this."

"Trying very hard not to." Denial was a state, and one I was currently in. He chuckled, sounding way too much like a man amused by the antics of a young pet.

Cobra's arms were a bit tighter than they had been when we first started walking. His face was unreadable, but Cubellios was hissing softly, tongue flickering in the air. She could probably smell that both of us were getting edgy with whatever Brain was saying.

"Project Garden was meant to take young, impressionable minds and place them in our enemy guilds. There, they would be nurtured and tended by other wizards. The lacrima ensured the implants would be able to make the most of the first class education they would be receiving, and also record key information about the wizards teaching them."

A hole the size of an ocean opened in my stomach.

 _A scar on the back of my ear, several years old._ Porlyusica hadn't been able to figure out why it was there, and I couldn't remember.

 _Natsu finding me and managing to escape scot free without any pursuit._ There was an entire dark guild, and Natsu wasn't nearly as strong as he is now.

 _My magic having been activated a few months before Natsu found me, but then having difficulty accessing it again. If an outside force is involved with accessing magic, especially from a negative source, then subconscious trauma can keep it from being accessed again._

It was painting a picture I didn't like.

The ideal place for a lacrima, somewhere no one would be able to look in even a full range physical, was inside the skull. And it would have been the most ideal place for a lacrima that recorded information. The control center of the human body. Laxus's Dragon Slayer lacrima was in his head too, the center of electricity in the human body. But putting it there had left him with a hefty scar. Comparatively, mine was a much neater job. Or at least, much less obvious.

And if that lacrima had been gathering information the whole time I was in Fairy Tail, coupled with my actively seeking some knowledge out...!

 _He's going to use me to hurt them and I don't know if I can do anything about it._

My panic smashed against my shield keeping Cobra from picking through my thoughts. It made a gap. For a second, I was exposed.

All my love for my family, my loyalty to the guild and what it stood for, and hanging over it all the gut wrenching, soul stabbing agony that my feelings for them would be what hurt them. My desire to know my family had led me to learn about them in every way I reasonably could.

 _...No...please, no..._

Unbidden, tears started to form in my eyes. I had no idea words, just plain words could hurt so much...

Cobra reacted.

Only slightly, but he did. He inhaled sharply, eyes widening for an instant before he controlled himself again. I did the same, patching the breach in my defenses as best I could.

 _ **Intimidation and breaking tactic.**_

The calm voice of my magic grounded me and I grabbed ahold of the new information. I sensed a faint smirk on Brain's face as he kept his back towards me.

He had told me this smattering of information. But instead of confirming or explaining anything, he had let my imagination run wild. He was letting my mind break itself down without saying another word about why I was actually here.

 _My spell worked almost too well._

I had pictured Brain as the villain in a story. In most of the tales I had read, there were few villains who didn't like to hear themselves talk about how brilliant their plan was. I had been trying to get information; that was all. And I had gotten information and seen on blatant display the other characteristic of a villain: Unmitigated and implacable cruelty. It had taken so little to nudge him into a villainous monologue because he was the real thing. This man was evil in ways that I had never encountered before.

Jellal had been controlled. Simon and Erza's other friends were tricked. Laxus had been horribly misguided but was still my friend. Judging by my conversation with Cobra, he was more resigned to being a pawn.

But Brain...

 _Taking a step back..._

 _I'm a child. Not even ten. And he has not only attacked my perception of myself as a human by reducing me to an object, a conveniently placed camera. He has attacked my relationship with my guild, implying that he had complete control over where I ended up. He has also attacked my emotions, by leading me to believe, or conclude, that my relationship with Fairy Tail will ultimately hurt them._

 _To reiterate: He has done all this...to a child._

This was a new low in humanity for me.

My sympathy for Cobra for growing up with this man as a role model and surrogate parent multiplied by ten.

My anger at Brain for kidnapping me multiplied by about a hundred.

I exhaled, finding my calm center again. I was holding it together still, but this had let me know something very important: I needed to put everything I valued in my mind behind better walls, or Brain would find a way to tear them to pieces.

"But all of that can wait. We, at the moment, have a patient that is in need of some…aid in his recovery." Brain said, leading Cobra into a cave with a coffin standing at the back. "I believe you specialize in writing stories. Surely this would be something easily in line with your talents."

The coffin's lid slid back to reveal-

 _What?_

Jellal lying inside the coffin.

-vVv-

The day had started out fairly ok. Being chosen to represent Fairy Tail for anything still gave Lucy a thrill of pride. But this mission was high end and very important. There was no room for games here. She was torn between being grateful that her friends were still relaxed enough to put her at ease, and wanting to slap them. Specifically Gray and Natsu.

Except when they stood between her and Ichiya. Then she was just straight up grateful. She remembered Fae and Erza mentioning the guy and that she would be lucky if she never met him. Now she knew why. He wasn't...bad, per say, just uncomfortable. And the other Blue Pegasus mages followed his lead. Lucy was happy to keep anyone between her and them.

They had talked for a brief while about how to proceed with this assignment of locating and eliminating the Oracion Seis. Fairy Tail was so well represented because they were powerful, main line fighters, Erza and Natsu especially. Gray and Lucy were more versatile in their abilities. Lamia Scale was along for a similar reason. Blue Pegasus was present because they were information specialists and had ways of tracking their enemy.

Cait Shelter had sent a wizard to join their cause because it was their territory that the Oracion Seis was fighting in, and they had provided information on what they suspected the Dark Guild's objective was. The ancient magi-tech city known as Nirvana.

Lucy had been somewhat taken aback at seeing Wendy. She couldn't be more than ten years old, but she was already a full wizard. She knew she had felt an instant rush of protectiveness towards her. And seeing that she also had a talking feline companion made Lucy...very nervous at first, considering how Happy usually behaved. But Charla thankfully didn't behave anything like the little blue pest...

It had been a rough plan at best, with some friction between both the different wizards. After all, Team Erza had once been enemies of the Lamia Scale wizards, and of course Ichiya was a walking source of unwanted attention.

But that was just how the day had started.

Now it had all gone so very wrong.

They had fanned out to try and track down the Oracion Seis's base. Lucy and Erza had been together when she received a call from their guild lacrima. The Requip mage's face went blank as she listened before she turned to Lucy and channeled some more magic into it to allow Makarov's voice to reach them both.

" _Fae has been kidnapped by Grey Chimera, a known associate of the Oracion Seis. Given the timing of this endeavour, you may very well come across her as a hostage."_ Makarov's eyes hardened as he looked at one of his best soldiers and gave an order.

" _Bring your team home safe, Erza. And bring our girl back."_ Erza nodded tightly, her hair stirring slightly as rage fueled magic affected the ethernano in the air around her. Lucy forced her grip on the lacrima key to Hibiki's Archive network to relax.

"Do we tell the others?" Lucy asked, calling on years of etiquette training to keep her voice steady. Her first instinct was to find their young guildmate, make sure she was safe and hang the consequences. But this mission was important as well and if Fae really had been taken hostage, then pounding the tar out of the enemy guild as quickly as possible would be the most efficient way of protecting her. Not to mention satisfying and the deserved punishment of the ones who had provoked the attack.

 _I think I've officially been taken over by the Fairy Tail mindset that violence can solve anything so long as you hit hard enough._

She consciously decided to worry if that was a good thing later. Such as after they rescued Fae.

Erza was thinking, head bowed and shoulders tight with worry.

"Telling Gray and Natsu that Fae has been kidnapped could make them unfocused from our mission."

"Not if they know that it was the Oracion Seis who took her. They'll just be even more motivated to kick their tails." A faint smile touched Erza's lips.

"True. Inform our allies that we may be facing a hostage situation." Lucy lifted the communication lacrima to convey the information, recalling the insistence of code names.

" _Goldilocks and Rose Red with new information: Oracion Seis may have a hostage."_

" _We hear you, Goldilocks, identify the hostage."_ Hibiki's voice sounded calm, and that grated on Lucy's nerves the tiniest bit until she rationalized that he didn't know who was being held.

" _Child, green hair, blue eyes. Possesses magic. Fairy Tail guild ward-"_ The connection shorted out with a roar as Natsu's rage made itself known in a nonverbal burst of emotion that Hibiki couldn't quite translate. Under it, Lucy swore she heard some words from Gray that she suspected the Archive Wizard let drop deliberately for Wendy's sake. Lucy clutched her head as the painful outburst ended. Then Gray's voice sounded over the line; cold and crystal hard.

" _Scent trail identified: Hostage confirmed."_

The flare of anger that Lucy felt was counterbalanced by a gentle glow from the keys at her side.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, brushing her fingers over them gently in gratitude.

She couldn't use her magic well if she was irrationally angry. Celestial Spirit magic required too much control for that to work. Her fingers gripped one key in particular that she had a close bond with and who she knew cared deeply for their hostage as well.

 _Loke, the bad guys caught Fae and they have her close by._

His answer wasn't as loud as Natsu's roar of rage, but she would swear she heard a large cat growling in the back of her mind.

 _I have an idea. I'm coming through._ He told her in a low, hard voice.

"We need to keep moving." Erza spoke, though Lucy didn't really hear her clearly until she cleared her thoughts again.

"Yes, but Erza, we need to find Fae as soon as possible. We won't be able to do anything if they hold Fae's life on the line."

"Agreed." She said, striding forward. "You have a plan?" Lucy nodded, swallowing.

"Loke. Even if they have her behind wards somewhere, he could get through them because he's a Celestial Spirit. And if he's there protecting her from whoever is guarding her, she could dismantle any trap she was in. All he'd have to do is find her."

Erza nodded, eyes forward.

"Good plan." Lucy touched Loke's key again, intending on summoning him with her own power.

Instead, a magic circle marked with his constellation appeared and Loke materialized on it, looking about as he had before, save his hair was a little longer and he was wearing a 3 piece suit.

And he didn't come alone.

"Loke?" He nodded his head to her politely.

"Excuse me, Lucy. But under the circumstances, I'd rather you weren't tied up keeping my gate open and risk you being vulnerable while I'm searching for Fae."

"Yeah, no problem. But who's that with you?" Standing behind Loke was a large dog, with a sharp muzzle, ragged ears, keen eyes and a long rangy body covered in battle scars.

"This is a friend of mine from the constellation Canes Venatici. Lucy, meet Orion. Orion, this is Lucy, my wizard." The silver colored hound dipped his head to her politely with a soft growl. Some Celestial Spirits couldn't speak, and others preferred not to. She couldn't be sure which was the case here...

"Canes Venatici...The Hunting Dogs!" Lucy's eyes widened. "You can track Fae with his help?" Loke snorted.

"Orion has literally tracked a star's fall to earth. Just give us a place to start and we'll find her wherever they took her." Erza spoke then.

"Natsu came across Fae's trail though he didn't say how old it was." She paused and listened over the comms lacrima. "Hibiki will send you their coordinates. You can start there." She then handed over the crystal to the Lion Zodiac. "Good hunting."

Lucy looked down at the dog, her heart beating very fast with nerves from meeting a new spirit.

"Orion? We're in your debt. I know it's not part of a contract, but..." She held out a hand and let some of her magic pool in her hand to transfer to the spirit. "-thank you for being willing to help us find her." The dog stepped forward, letting his head rest against her palm as he accepted the energy from her. He was a modestly powerful Silver Spirit, but Lucy felt no major drain from loaning him some extra energy to stay on the mortal plane without a contract.

"If you need me, Lucy, just summon me." Loke told her before running off into the trees, Orion loping at his side.

"Be careful, you two..." Lucy whispered.

She was worried about Fae, wherever she was being held. And about her friends. And her allies. And now about two spirits who had come at personal risk to help.

Erza's hand resting on her shoulder made her spine stiffen.

She turned without another word and followed Titania further into the forest.

-vVv-

The hunt had changed.

Eric could hear that in the faint thoughts he managed to pick up from the light guild wizards who were spread throughout the forest. They were all moving far more carefully now, alert and ready for trouble.

Blue Pegasus's satillite lacrima were annoying to hide from. It meant he couldn't fly with Cubellios until they blew their cover and could fight openly. He and Midnight had been able to map out where all of the enemy surveillance was. But for now, they were still stuck in a waiting game. They still needed more time.

Eric had buried his feelings long ago. He didn't feel guilt, he didn't feel shame.

The young fairy knelt by Jellal's coffin, hands on either side of his face as she worked, eyes staring blankly into the distance.

Cubellious on the other hand, didn't have nearly as many compunctions or issues with showing how he, no, _she_ felt. He could tell by the tiny shivers that ran through her body that she was extremely unhappy. And her gaze always turned back toward the silent child, indicating what she was upset about.

 _Nothing we can do for her._ Cobra thought grimly, stroking his friend and partner's neck. _This is what she was made to do. She had a little more freedom than the rest of us, but no one escapes from Brain._


	23. Celestial Battle

Wendy hadn't known what to expect from this venture.

It was her first time meeting wizards from such powerful guilds, and she had been so nervous that she tripped and fell flat on her face when she recognized them. Her humiliation had only been compounded when she realized Natsu Dragneel had been there as well.

She had been trying to find other Dragon Slayers since Jellal dropped her off with Cait Shelter. And when she had heard about Natsu, she felt hope rise in her heart. Someone else who had a draconic foster parent. Someone else who would believe she wasn't crazy.

But remembering what the mission was cooled her enthusiasm. Searching out the Oracion Seis to rescue another child? That was terrifying.

She had been assigned to Jura as a partner, his Earth magic providing the best complement to her Sky Dragon Slayer magic. In addition, he was the most experienced fighter in the group and his style was well suited to defending her if necessary.

So she had been very confused when someone moving way too fast had started harrying Jura from the front. But she didn't stay still. She acted. There was another girl out here who was captured and they needed to find her and stop this Dark Guild before they could hurt anyone else.

But as she moved to try and help Jura, she felt something was wrong with the air around her. It was too still, too-

Darkness closed over her before she could even scream.

When she could see again, she was in a cave somewhere, with a man who she recognized as Brain, the leader of the Oracion Seis, and a girl with green hair who looked like the hostage they were supposed to rescue. Brain was ordering her to heal a man restrained in a sort of coffin. A man she knew.

Wendy swallowed.

She knew that Jellal was a wanted criminal. She had overhead her guild master talking about the mess the Magic Council was in after it was discovered that two of their most prominent members were in reality leaders of the Balam Alliance.

But she didn't see how much of a choice she had. They could easily hurt the girl, Faerun, their hostage. And she wasn't an official wizard.

What was more, this was Jellal. He was more important to Wendy than anyone else except Carla and Grandeeney. Even if he was a criminal, she owed him too much. She had to help.

So Wendy knelt by the coffin's side as Fae cradled Jellal's head in her hands and she started to work. She kept on glancing at Fae, fear, worry and nerves singing in the back of her mind. It didn't look like the other girl had been hurt, but she definitely wasn't alright either. She seemed to be mentally absent, her movements were mechanical, her eyes glazed and staring straight ahead. She took a breath, screwing up her courage to speak in spite of the enemies who were waiting a short distance away for them to finish their work.

"I'm Wendy." She whispered finally. "You're Fae, right?" This got a reaction, though she almost wished it hadn't. Fae's empty eyes turned towards her, the barest flicker of acknowledgement in them. Wendy forced down her fear, though she couldn't keep her hands from trembling.

What did they do to you?

From what the Fairy Tail mages had said, Fae was lively and energetic. She was smart, active and affectionately termed their little sister. Wendy had been touched by how they referred to her so casually.

(Natsu and Gray had broken some furniture during their first meeting. Lucy had scolded them, saying that Fae wasn't there to fix what they destroyed.

"Yeah, we know." Natsu replied as Gray rummaged through the wreckage of what had once been a rather nice piece of furniture. "We just wanted to bring her something that we had with us so she can see what we've been up to without her."

"You broke a chair just to-!"

"Nah, breaking it was an accident, but since it's a lost cause, may as well get her something from it!")

They loved her. They were her family.

It would hurt them to see her like this.

"Your friends are coming." Wendy told her in the quietest, but fiercest whisper she could manage. "They're coming, and they'll get both of us out. I promise..."

"She can't hear you." Brain called carelessly. "Not really. The child known as Faerun is dead. She is once again Garden 2.0."

"But...this is-" Brain cut her off with a fond smile that made Wendy shudder.

"You're young, Sky Sorceress, and you do not understand. G-2.0 adopted the name and identity of an amnesiac child wizard to infiltrate the Fairy Tail guild, neither knowing or questioning why she did so. She needed to be withdrawn from them to revert to her natural state." Wendy rebelled heavily at the notion.

She had watched the Fantasia Parade via lacrima. She had seen how Fae acted and heard about who she was. She refused to believe that this quiet automaton was who she was meant to be.

Wendy ignored the man watching them work and focused on healing Jellal.

She hadn't seen him in years, but there was no mistaking his features. He had the same mark on his face and everything. She had been a little hurt that he's never checked up on her in the years since he had left her with Cait Shelter. But that was no reason to not heal him right now.

"G-2.0. Go with Midnight. Assist him in subduing Titania." Fae rose mechanically and moved over to the other wizard's side. Midnight looked annoyed.

"Why me? Send her with Angel or something. Or Cobra."

"No arguments." Brain said, hands folded over each other as he held his staff. "Titania is without a doubt the greatest threat the Light guilds have sent against us. And we know from our experience with the R-system that threatening G-2.0 will make her lie down and stop fighting."

Wendy wished desperately that her communications lacrima hadn't been taken so she could warn Erza that a trap was being laid for her. But they were aware that his situation was a possibility at the very least. It would turn out all right eventually...

Hopefully.

She pushed a little harder with her healing magic.

 _Please, Jellal... please wake up! Fae needs help! I need help!_

Then it was as though Jellal's own magic system revived. It was as though she had been pouring water into a glass before. But now he was drinking from it, draining it. He was suddenly healing much faster than before.

His eyes opened. Wendy's heart lifted with hope for a second-

But she saw no recognition in his gaze.

"Grand Chariot." Jellal was suddenly moving. Faster than anything Wendy had ever seen or felt. She was tucked under one arm and Fae was taken under another and they were flying away...No, not flying, Jellal was just running really fast.

Wendy could only hope that they were safer with Jellal than they had been with Brain.

-vVv-

Loke was tailing Orion closely as they ran through the forest.

Orion had picked up a relatively fresh trail for Fae and had been pushing hard to catch up. He hadn't needed to learn her scent. When the Celestial Spirit King went to visit the mortal world, and came back with a mortal's scent on him, it made the constellations sit up and pay attention. Most of them were now very eager to meet both the Celestial Wizard who had earned the King's respect and the young Rune Wizard with the power to recognize Leo for who he was, and the heart to defend him against even the king's judgement.

The hound growled and picked up his pace.

"A new trail. More than simply her. Others are with her. She is being carried, at a very swift rate. She has not been harmed."

That was a relief.

"Any idea who?" Orion chuffed.

"No. It is not any of the mortals who had recent contact with your wizard." Loke didn't know any of them who could move at that rate anyway. Pure Speed Magic was rare, and he knew Blue Pegasus didn't have one.

He had kept an eye on his old guild even as he had waited to die. And he was personally quite glad that he hadn't needed to face any of them. While he had been relieved of the worst of his guilt, he didn't want to trigger any more bad memories. If this situation hadn't gone to hell with Fae being abducted again, he would have rather not been summoned anywhere near them.

At a low bark from Orion, Loke increased his speed to match the stride of the large, battle scarred hunting dog. They didn't know who had Fae, and from the lack of communication, it wasn't one of the allied guild wizards who had her.

"The trail is getting fresher." Orion reported. "Whoever is carrying her has slowed his pace and is attempting to cover their trail." His head turned to the side and he emitted a low growl. "I smell a snake..."

The forewarning was enough for them to jump clear as a jet of poison arced out of the sky, splattering on the ground with a hiss.

Loke looked up, a human male with magenta hair stood there, standing on the back of a larged, winged purple snake.

"You weren't with them before." He remarked, looking at them with narrowed eyes and intense concentration. "Where'd you two come from? Unless..." Dark eyes flicked over them and the man smiled.

"What are you smiling for?" Loke asked, keeping his voice from dropping into a growl. This guy was clearly a threat who used the time tested method of being a jackass to provoke his opponents.

"You're both Celestial Spirits. You don't think in Common, just a bunch of random gibberish." Mind reader? Not important.

Orion let out a low snarl and a bark.

"He has been near the child!" Loke's demeanor changed from defensive to much more aggressive. He didn't hide the roar from his words as he spoke.

"Where is Fae?!" This elicited a reaction, not from the man, but the snake. It's head rolled as the wings continued to beat to keep it and its rider aloft.

"We don't have her." He said lazily, folding his arms and looking them over. "But I am supposed to bring her back from wherever Jellal took her to." Jellal!

Loke knew the name if not the man. He had heard the story of what had happened, but had also been told about the additional conflict. How the final battle hadn't been to defeat Jellal, but to try and save him from whatever was inhabiting his body. If he had Fae and he was acting as his true self...then she was safe. But if he had reverted, then she would be in even more danger.

"If you and the dog are saving me the trouble of tracking her down, we may as well just sit back and watch you work and just take her when you find her for us." Loke's fists clenched and he reached out to the stars that formed his constellation for strength, feeding the same strength into Orion.

There was no way this could go down without a fight.

"Orion." Loke said shortly. "Keep to the trail." He lashed out with a direct punch into the air and the enemy pair swerved to dodge-

The faintest ripple in the air alerted the snake and it managed to bunch its coils to the side awkwardly in midair to avoid a streak of light that had shot down from the sky.

 _Orion will find Fae and help her get away from Jellal. And he's faster than I am anyway, I've just been slowing him down. I'll handle skinning the snake._

Loke didn't often like to play on his immortality like this, but if the poison shot was anything to judge by, a normal human would certainly have trouble against this wizard. To him, all poison did was smell bad and maybe sting a bit. It couldn't hurt him in the long run.

Loke boosted his dodge with a burst of light from his feet as the snake lashed out with a snap. His fist came up and batted aside another blast of poison meant to douse him, this time spat by the wizard.

 _I am friends with Natsu, and I know Gajeel. Sooner or later, these people spitting stuff that humans have no right to be eating will stop surprising me._

-vVv-

Erza was growling with frustration as she faced her opponent. She and Lucy were having some serious trouble with this enemy. He seemed to have some kind of spatial warping magic. Lucy was keeping her distance, since she wasn't as able to recover from a deadly clothing mishap as Erza. Charla, who had insisted on accompanying them, was hiding a short distance away.

Their opponent was continually using space to twist her weapons back at her, or towards Lucy, when he wasn't trying to turn her into a puppet via her own armor. He had already almost managed to strangle her twice. And even now, he was turning her Purgatory armor against her, the sharp ridges and spikes pressing against her skin. Only a concentrated flare of magic, thinking of metal and strength, made it so the armor only bruised instead of penetrating her skin.

It was something she mostly did on instinct in any given fight. Unfortunately, that defensive method of absorbing damage tended to take most of a wizard's strength. Even Erza couldn't keep it up for very long.

 _Come on, where's the weakness?_ She thought, jumping back to allow one of Lucy's Celestial Spirits, Taurus, to charge through while she freed herself.

An obvious advantage was that Midnight couldn't warp anything that came from the Celestial Spirit Realm. His manipulations appeared to be limited to this world's materials. But even then, he was a tenacious and difficult opponent to catch, using anything in his surroundings to protect himself.

There had to be a pattern.

While Taurus was pressing him, Lucy darted forward to join the fray and Erza barely restrained herself from crying out. They were having her stay back for a reason-!

Lucy had a glint in her eye as she uncoiled her whip and let it fly with unerring precision.

It caught Midnight on the face, making him yell and curse in pain and twist himself in space to put more distance between them.

"Gotcha!" Lucy cheered. "You can only twist one substance at a time! You either have to be defending yourself from attacks with the air around you or be concentrating on more distant materials!"

Erza felt a surge of pride at the girl's observation. Lucy was still relatively new to the guild and to fighting, but her intellect and observation skills were second to none. Midnight was disoriented by the hit and staggered, snarling with frustration.

"Good eye, Lucy!" She saw something change in the air. It looked to her like a shadow had split off of Midnight and was moving independent of him. Erza shifted her stance, forcing her armor to cooperate with her as she started to move. But more importantly, she subtly closed her one real eye, sacrificing her depth perception in favor of guarding herself against illusions.

Lucy and Taurus together continued to press the false projection, Erza caught her breath and circled the fight. She wanted to appear as though she was waiting for an opening, but in truth, she was moving to continue to keep the real Midnight in her sight. He was trying to distance himself from the fight, trying to lock onto Lucy's whip no doubt. He might not be able to affect things from the Spirit Realm, but Lucy's whip was not immune to such a manipulation. It would be a neat way of eliminating them both.

Erza thought through the armor she had in her collection. There was bound to be clothing that Midnight couldn't turn against her.

 _Yes, this will do. Now, he can't do space and material at the same time. So if he's focused on Lucy and her things..._

Erza requipped a polearm and struck Midnight on the side of the head while he should have been hidden under an illusion. His hand reached out, her Infinity Robe wrapped around her neck, trying to cut off her air-

It simply stretched, causing no issues with her breathing. Midnight had only a second to realize his mistake before the flat of Taurus' ax caught him and sent him flying into a tree.

"Nice swing!" Lucy cheered her Spirit on, cracking her whip as she swung it around. Instead of aiming it at Midnight, she used it to cut the flying carpet out of the air as it attempted to fly to it's master's side.

Midnight then lay motionless.

Lucy acted first, approaching cautiously and checking their unconscious enemy.

"He's out." She said, straightening with a sigh of relief. "Taurus: You were amazing."

"Any chance I earned a-"

"You don't get to talk to me about a smooch until Fae is back with us and safe!" She snapped, irritated with his one track mind, but she blew out her anger quickly enough. "Head on back. I need Virgo." Erza gave Lucy an odd look.

"Why that spirit in particular?" The pink haired Maiden was a powerful spirit, but their enemy was already defeated and Lucy wasn't the type to kick a downed dog.

"Well, she always goes on about punishment...and it turns out she has a pretty impressive collection of chains, ropes and restraints. It'll be something he can't use his magic to escape from."

"Well thought." Virgo brought them the restraints and they set about securing their prisoner. But a small voice calling out made them pause.

"Erza? Natsu? Someone?"

"Fae?"

-vVv-

"Tell me where she is!"

Natsu roared in fury, pouring down as much concentrated fire as he could on the man who had claimed to be behind Fae's kidnapping. He hadn't wanted to believe him at first, but his nose didn't lie. Brain had recently been near Fae. She was supposed to be back home in the guild! She was a kid!

"Your friend is gone." Brain said calmly. "It is mine once again."

Natsu felt the fire in his belly scorch even hotter as he pushed flames out from his feet, sending him rocketing straight down at his enemy.

"Fire Dragon Sword Horn!"

Brain was spouting something about their goal, activating some old magic device that was buried somewhere around here to take over the world or something. After taking Natsu's attack head on, though, he shut up about that, thankfully. He impacted the ground with a grunt Natsu only heard thanks to his sharp hearing. He was good at taking hits, good enough that Natsu had to pay attention to know if he was making progress. But he didn't want to knock him out right away. The bastard still had to tell him where Fae was!

Happy swooped in and quickly caught Natsu by his vest to keep him from falling right on top of Brain.

"Natsu, be careful! He can't tell us where she is if you knock him out!"

"You let me worry about that!" Several streamers of dark energy lanced upwards from the ground. Happy flew to the side, avoiding the attack, Natsu aiding his partner by shooting some more fire from his feet to push them out of the way.

Happy set Natsu on the ground and he immediately homed in on the white haired enemy wizard, who was trying to get up.

"I don't care what you think you've done to Fae! We're not going home without her!"

The ground started to shake.

 _Oh come on! The ground isn't supposed to do that!_

Just as his stomach started to roil, Happy picked him up again, keeping him from making an unwanted mess of this fight. Natsu sent two separate streams of fire streaking towards the place where he had last seen the wizard claiming to have turned Fae against them.

"You are blinded by the idea...that it wanted to be there in the first place." Dark beams of magic cut through Natsu's fire and he quickly spread his arms, flaring his magic to keep the attack from hitting Happy. As long as the ground kept on shaking, Natsu knew he had to stay airborne if he wanted to get answers out of this joker.

"Why wouldn't she want to be there? It's home!"

The dark wizard's smile made Natsu get a cold shiver of disgust.

"It was it's assignment to gain vital information on you. All your weaknesses and flaws in the structure while becoming your critical weakness." The cold shiver vanished, replaced by red hot fury.

-vVv-

Happy felt his fur stand on end. Natsu was vibrating slightly, barely noticeable if he hadn't been holding him aloft. But he suddenly felt as though the wizard was about to explode.

Completely oblivious to the building heat around the Dragon Slayer, Brain continued.

"Originally, the plan was to hold it hostage to force your guild into an unconditional surrender. But I think now it would be vastly more amusing to have G-2.0 execute you all itself. On the one hand, you are dying at the hands of one you claim to have loved. And how long would that love last before one of you fought back and destroyed it?" Happy barely needed to keep Natsu aloft now. The heat he was generating was creating a sizable thermal.

 _This guy does not know when to shut up._ The flying cat shivered. _Natsu's been trying to get him to talk about where Fae is. But now he's just gonna fry him like a trout for saying all that crap._

Happy felt Natsu tensing, shifting his body downward. He would want Happy to drop him in just a few more seconds. As soon as he had built up enough magic power...

"Shut up..." Natsu's voice was seething with rage and literal heat. Brain didn't stop, in fact he seemed eager, leaning forward, focused completely on Natsu, but dropping his guard.

"It is just a G-project. A test run for the program. Meant to be disposable as soon as its mission was complete-"

"I said shut up." Natsu's voice was a literal growl now, having left all humanity behind it. He brought his fists close together. "And stop calling her an 'it'. She's Celeste D Faerun, a Fairy Tail wizard. She's not your pawn, and you aren't going to touch her ever again!"

It was at this moment that Brain realized that antagonizing this dragon slayer was going to have very different results than he anticipated.

"Fire Dragon Scorching Whirlwind!" Natsu put his hands together, his magic circle appearing under Brain's feet and a raging tornado of fire flinging him upward into the sky. He didn't even have time to yell before Natsu, flown into position by Happy, pounded him back into the ground with enough force to leave a large, smoking crater.

"Natsu, you over did it again!" Happy protested. "How's he gonna tell us where she is now?"

"He still is." Natsu growled. "Take a whiff off him." Happy cast about, sniffing deeply before his wings flared with extra magic with joy and hope.

"That's Fae's scent! He was near her, so we just gotta follow his trail to find her!"

"So what are you waiting for? We got a Fae to find!"

"Aye, sir!"

-vVv-

The departing wizards failed to notice that the tattoos on Brain's face were starting to fade. Where there had once been six, there were now only four.

-vVv-

Lucy watched with wide eyes as Fae stumbled out of the woods, clothes torn and dirty, but she was alive and seemingly unharmed.

The relief she felt at the sight was palpable, making her shoulders relax.

Erza remained tense and vigilant.

"Were you followed?" Fae shook her head, eyes watering slightly.

"I don't think so." Erza dismissed her sword and grabbed Fae in a tight hug.

"Thank goodness you're alright. We were worried sick about you."

"This time, it was not my fault." Fae mumbled. "Stupid dark guild..." She paused and looked at their still unconscious prisoner. "Who's that?"

"A member of the Oracion Seis." Lucy replied, coiling her whip. She caught sight of Fae's face paling slightly. "What's wrong?"

"He's the one who met my kidnappers and brought me here." The girl's arms were covered in goosebumps and she seemed on the verge of retreating from Midnight's unconscious form.

Erza performed her usual questioning of Fae, trying to both reassure herself that she was unharmed and determine where the remaining members of the Oracion Seis were located.

But Lucy felt something in the air that set her teeth on edge. It was familiar, but foreign. Like a memory that had become stagnant with time and distance. She tried not to let her unease show to Erza or Fae as she moved to circle through the woods, trying to locate the direction Fae had come from. If she had passed this way, then Loke and Orion the Hound would be following as well.

So she was out of sight when she heard a strangled cry of alarm from Erza, but she found what was making her so uneasy.

There was a woman wearing a white feathered dress, hidden in the trees. She was holding a golden Celestial Spirit Key.

The familiar feeling that had been bothering Lucy?

Someone else opening a Spirit's gate.

Foreign?

The last time Lucy had felt someone summoning another spirit had been when she had been practicing with her mother. And this woman's magic felt nothing like Layla Heartfilia's.

Months of combat jobs and practice came to bear as Lucy sent her whip flying out towards the woman's hand. If she could knock her key out of her hands, then she wouldn't be able to communicate with whatever summon she had attacking Erza and Fae. There were only 12 Golden Keys, and Lucy knew all of them by heart from the stories her mother had told her. But she couldn't identify which one she was using from this distance.

Lucy's aim was true. She hit the other Celestial Wizard's hand and forced her to drop the key she held. She reacted quickly, retreating away from Lucy's advance. Without the key she needed to speak aloud to her spirit, which meant Lucy would get a chance to identify them.

"Gemini!" Gemini. The Twins. Fae- It wasn't Fae!

Anger burned in Lucy's stomach as she brought her whip around again for another attack. Gemini, still wearing Fae's face but in a strange, unearthly expression that never would have graced the real girl's features, darted forward. A white sphere of energy appeared around the spirit and her wizard, the same shield Fae had used to protect herself from Bickslow's dolls.

"Did you at least finish off the other one?" The wizard snapped in an arrogant tone, further cementing Lucy's dislike of her. Completely aside from using Fae's face and knowledge to trick them, this kind of self entitled person was someone Lucy had hated being around as a girl. But considering her family's connections and social circle, it had been inevitable.

"You summoned me back before I could." Gemini answered. "This girl's body and reflexes aren't conditioned for lethal force." _Of course it isn't, Fae's a child not an assassin!_ So Gemini had gotten the drop on Erza, but not managed to do permanent harm. That was good to know.

"You can give me your excuses later." The woman sniffed. "Just destroy this girl already."

"You need a major attitude change, lady." Lucy growled at her opponent. Speaking like this to anyone was a no-go. But to her contracted Spirit?

The white haired woman sneered.

"It's Angel, Lucy Heartfilia. You can at least know the name of the one who'll leave your body for the crows and claim your keys. Gemini tells me you have an impressive collection."

The fire of anger in Lucy's belly was stoking higher and higher the more Angel spoke. But she clamped down on her temper and gave the sweetest smile she could.

"One. You're awfully confident for someone to had to resort to a cheap shot to even lay a finger on Erza." Any second now. The shield is still up, but... "And two: You'll get my spirits over my dead body." From the few seconds Lucy had known this woman, she knew she would rather die than allow her keys to fall into her hands. It was an old rule of Celestial Mages. Right of Conquest. If one summoner overcame another in a significant way, made them surrender or killed them, they could force contracts with keys from the defeated wizard.

 _I won't let it happen. Not to any of you!_

Erza was coming out of the other side of the trees, looking thunderous

"Erza, she's a Celestial Spirit Wizard contracted to the Golden Spirit, Gemini. She's had her copy all of Fae's abilities." And her limitations as well. That meant that with enough damage, 'Fae' would have no choice but to drop the shield.

Erza got the message and summoned a large two handed sword.

Lucy palmed her key ring.

 _We've got trouble. Another Celestial Spirit Wizard._

"Open: Gate of the Maiden, Virgo!" She commanded. Summoning her spirits formally let them know she needed them for work. And the preliminary message told them what kind of work.

Virgo appeared, curtsying to Lucy.

"Ready to deliver some punishment, Princess."

"Good." We need to press that shield as hard and fast as we can. Go from below, Erza and I will take front and back.

Virgo then burrowed her way underground as Erza and Lucy rushed from both sides.

The shield was composed of hot light that burned faintly whenever Lucy's bare skin got to close. And it certainly held up to the assault, but it was getting noticeably thinner and weaker the longer she and Erza attacked it and Gemini was starting to show some strain as well. Wearing Fae's face, it made for a painful image, but Lucy gritted her teeth and forged on.

It wasn't her.

But it was still a Celestial Spirit. And that wasn't much better.

"Switch!" Angel ordered sharply. Gemini dropped the shield and raced towards Lucy. Erza and Virgo continued to pressure Angel, who summoned a Silver Spirit, Caelum the Chisel, she thought, to keep them at bay. Lucy managed to dodge back, but not fast enough to avoid Gemini's hand brushing her arm.

Her form blurred for a second.

Fae's green hair lightened to golden blonde, she shot up in height and her eyes shifted from ethernano blue to brown.

Lucy was soon looking at a mirror image of herself. Her shock was palpable enough to make her hesitate.

Smirking at her briefly, Gemini turned, and in Lucy's voice called.

"Virgo, attack Erza!" Panic ripped through Lucy as her Spirit was clearly confused at the order. It was a fully valid order, since Gemini was replicating everything about Lucy, down to the magic that powered the contract she and Virgo had.

But the order was clear. And Virgo, though she hesitated, turned towards Erza. The S-Class wizard's face was grim as she lifted her sword, ready to finish the fight in a single stroke.

"No!" Lucy's heart was in her throat. She knew anything that happened to Virgo here wasn't permanent. She would simply be 'magically deported' back to the Celestial Spirit realm to recuperate her strength enough to remake a physical form. But that didn't mean that they couldn't be in pain throughout the process.

"Close, Gate of the Maiden!" Erza's strike swished through the air where Virgo had been. Lucy knew she had to act quickly. If Gemini could mimic her magic enough to interfere with the orders she gave her spirits, then she could possibly also use the copy of her keys sitting at her belt to resummon them against her.

And if that was the case, she wanted to take no chances.

Another precise whip strike and Lucy had nabbed the key ring from Gemini's belt. It disappeared as soon as it left her proximity, and better still, it didn't reappear after a few seconds. Lucy then needed to dodge an energy blast from Angel's other spirit.

"What was that?" Angel asked in a mocking tone. "You sent away the one thing that was keeping this fight somewhat fair. She'll just reform and be back tomorrow." Lucy bristled at the tone and the implication that she was the weak link in the fight.

"Just because she can survive an attack like that doesn't mean that she should have to!"

Angel sniffed.

"It's your life on the line. If you can't use the tools you have, you don't deserve those keys."

Lucy had discovered new heights of rage after joining Fairy Tail. Her temper had been pushed to all kinds of new levels of tolerance and patience.

But all that vanished in a single instance of fury.

She could feel that she had emitted a brief burst of raw magical energy from her outrage at this...monster's words. Erza was pausing, watching her carefully. Waiting for her to say something...

Lucy ran her hands over the length of her whip, letting the familiar tensile strength of the leather ground her fury into something she could work with.

"Erza. Please stay out this."

"Are you sure, Lucy?"

"It's personal." Lucy said curtly.

 _She called them tools. She called my friends tools and expects me to sacrifice them to keep myself safe. She expects me to be like her._

 _I'm not her._

 _I love my spirits. They are my family, not my shields. And she wants to take them._

Another thing Lucy had learned and learned well, was the Fairy Tail response to those who threatened their family.

"...I understand." Erza said finally. She leapt back, clearly withdrawing from the fight.

"Well, if that's the case: Gemini, copy her." Angel ordered cooly, pointing at Erza. Gemini wordlessly started to obey, her outline blurring in the air with a faint glow.

"Points for trying." Lucy admitted, "But that's not gonna go so well." Then she moving on the attack.

"Hey!" Angel yelped as Lucy unleashed a barrage of attacks on her opponent, trying to get a hold of a limb to pull her off balance. "What do you think you're doing!? You fight the Spirit, not me!" The whip coiled around her wrist and Lucy, planted her feet, yanking her closer and sinking a fist into her gut, knocking the wind out of her.

"The first rule of a Celestial Spirit Wizard is being in tune with your contracted Spirit. Even an amateur can tell when a Spirit is bottoming out on magic power." Lucy then gestured back to Gemini, who was on her knees, shaking slightly as he eyes widened as she tried to complete the transformation.

"Some spells are stronger than others. And Gemini's ability to copy magic has to take a lot out of her. You've had her mimic both Fae and me in less than ten minutes. From a Story Mage to a Celestial Spirit Wizard. Completely different people, completely different magic. If you had an actual contract instead of this slavery, you'd be able to feed your magic power to her and sustain the transformation as long as your power lasts." Gemini lifted her head, staring at Lucy with wide eyes. Lucy knew that look. It was how Fae looked when she was reading something from the past.

 _Gemini is learning something with her magic. What is she hearing? From me or from Erza?_ She was caught in between the two of them, unable to complete the transformation for lack of magic power. But the order was compelling her to keep trying.

 _I'll finish this quickly, Gemini._ Lucy vowed. _I promise, I won't let her hurt you anymore._

Lucy took a hit to the torso, and she rolled back with the punch. It wasn't that strong of a blow, Angel clearly wasn't a close range fighter, but she still snapped her whip around to lash at her legs, even as she rolled to avoid another blast from Caelum.

"Open: Gate of the Scorpion: Scorpio!" A dark skinned man with a red metallic scorpion tail appeared. "Blast her!" Angel coughed, trying to regain her wind from where Lucy had socked her.

Wind and sand started to gather around the tip of Scorpio's tail. Lucy continued to move until she was in the right position. I need water, and the river is just over this way. Now she just had to weather the hit. She called her magic up around her the way Natsu had told her. The power coating her skin absorbed the worst of the damage from the localized sandstorm that came flying at her. She was a bit disoriented, as she flew through the air, branches tearing at her body. Landing in the river brought her to her senses.

Her hand went to her keys.

 _Aquarius, I need you._

And regardless of how the Water Bearer acted, or what she said when Lucy summoned her, she would always come.

The mermaid caught Lucy under the arms and quickly delivered her to the surface, her water jar spitting out a dome of water that caught the rest of the sand and turned it to mud.

"Stupid girl." The Spirit muttered. "What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now?"

"A woman who claims to be a Celestial Spirit Wizard trying to kill her spirits by giving them orders they don't have the magic power to follow." Lucy replied hotly. "She almost made Gemini kill herself."

"Themselves." Aquarius corrected, hefting her jar up as streams of water shot out to intercept yet another sandstorm. "They're the Twins, there's two of them, for all that they transform into one individual. And you call yourself a Celestial Mage." But she did not protest the fact that there was a summoner giving orders with no regard for her spirits. "Who's the jackass that's dirtying my water!?" She shrieked over the howl of the wind.

The sandstorm stopped abruptly and Lucy leaned aside cautiously to try and get a look at what Angel was doing.

"Babe, is that you?"

-vVv-

"But we have to help her!" Erza gave Hibiki of Blue Pegasus a flat look.

"Lucy is more than capable of defeating this woman on her own."

"I'm not saying she isn't, but these wizards are all extremely dangerous. We agreed to team up against them, that's why we formed this alliance!" The well dressed young man insisted, trying to move past Erza to the battleground of the dueling Celestial Spirit Mages.

But Titania had taken her stance and would not be moved.

"Lucy has claimed this fight, Hibiki Lates. Do not interfere." But in spite of her firm words, Erza still had two swords planted point first in the ground before her, and she was ready to rush in to protect her guild mate.

But there had been a fervent burning light in Lucy's eyes as she glared at Angel. Whatever she had seen in her opponent, it was something Lucy couldn't abide and was taking upon herself to remove. She had grown since joining their family.

Her gauntleted hands tightened on the hilts of her swords as she watched.

 _I believe in you, Lucy. Win this fight._

-vVv-

"Scorpio!" The other Spirit looked as confused as the Water Bearer was horrified.

"This girl is your wizard? I didn't know that." Scorpio glanced at Angel, a steely glint flickering in his eyes. "If that's the case, then sorry Angel. Conflict of interest. You're gonna need to get someone else out here." Angel did not look like she was happy with that at all.

"What the hell are you talking about? What kind of rule is that?!"

"Because they're together, having them fight wouldn't be violating any summoning laws, just a really insensitive move." Lucy supplied, looking at her suddenly very shy and terrified Spirit. _Is this even the same woman? She's completely different when she's around Scorpio!_

"You can kiss and make up later, just kill her already!"

The Spirit looked at her steadily.

"You're ordering me to kill someone."

"Yes, you dimwit! Kill this sorry excuse for a wizard already!"

"You, my master, want me, a Golden Spirit, to kill Lucy Heartfilia, a Celestial Spirit Wizard? Directly?"

"Have I been speaking another language this whole time, just get on with it already, idiot!"

This actually made Scorpio grin.

"Been waiting a long time to say this: Hell no, woman. I can't break Celestial Law, even at the behest of my wizard. Peace, I'm out!" And with that, Scorpio started to vanish. Lucy was suddenly aware of a lethal glare being directed at her from Aquarius.

"I didn't dismiss you, You can't just leave!" The white haired summoner shrieked. Lucy touched her key to see what Aquarius wanted.

 _You had better pray that you didn't screw up my relationship with my boyfriend by making me yell at him!_ Her mental voice rattled against the inside of Lucy's head, making it ache.

 _I actually didn't-_

 _Send me back now and don't call me again for a week! I've got some major damage control to do thanks to you!_

 _I really don't see how this is my fault, but ok!_

"Close, Gate of the Waterbearer." Lucy intoned, letting Aquarius vanished back to the Celestial Spirit Realm. Even as she did so, she darted for Angel. If she could just get in a few solid hits while she was distracted...

Lucy's kick was hastily and sloppily blocked by Angel's raised forearm as she fell back with a cry. Lucy didn't let up, pressing with punches and kicks as fast and hard as she could. She wasn't a hand to hand fighter typically, but she was clearly more practiced at it than Angel. Even the lightest blows made her reel even as she blocked them.

"Useless creatures, you can't do anything right!" She snarled, "Caelum! Blast her already!"

The Chisel had been hanging in the air, dormant and motionless for as long as Angel's attention had been diverted. But it reactivated now, circling to home in on its target. Lucy had to break off her attack to duck for cover behind a tree.

She wasn't sure if this was just her imagination, but Caelum was a suspiciously lousy shot. He was getting close to her, but never actually made contact.

Lucy ran through her list of available spirits that might be able to help her.

Horologium could certainly protect her, but would be hurt by the fire.

Crux wasn't a combat spirit and wasn't available for fights as per his contract.

Lyra she could only summon a few times a month and wasn't much for a fight anyway.

Plue was cute and good company, but not what she needed.

Virgo and Taurus were both tired from her calling on them previously.

Another blast from Caelum sheared through the tree just above Lucy's head and she cursed under her breath as she darted for better shelter. She was still soaking wet from the river and the natural debris of the forest was sticking to her everything and her wet clothes were slowing her down. She made it to a large boulder by the river bank, but didn't have anywhere else to run to.

 _I need someone to keep Caelum occupied while I get close._

She quickly checked her magic levels and those of her spirits, running her fingers over her keys.

Loke's light blasts would be really useful in throwing off Caelum's aim, but he was still out looking for Fae, the real Fae. Angel was laughing crazily as she ordered her Spirit to keep firing. Each laser blast melting a little way through her cover.

 _Right, one option. Saggitarius, I need your help._

Without her even issuing the command to open his Gate, he came, kneeling with her behind her cover. Lucy kept her hand on his key as she explained what she needed.

 _Can you do it?_

He saluted silently in response, looking remarkably serious for his somewhat odd appearance.

They both darted out on different sides of the boulder and the split second it took for Caelum to change targets was all the Archer needed.

Lucy didn't know how, but his arrows were somehow intercepting each energy blast in midair, causing an explosion of sparks to burst at each point of impact. It didn't matter how fast the bolts came, there was always an arrow there to block it. Or so she assumed since she wasn't fried as she ran at Angel. She didn't run headlong, but weaved back and forth in case Caelum changed targets.

Lucy focused on where she wanted to hit. On the place that would end the fight. Angel had been favoring her left side, somewhere where she knew she had landed a solid punch to the hip. Just one more blow, placed just right and she would be down and helpless.

Lucy's forward momentum was abruptly arrested by a wall of dark pink, fluffy...wool? It quickly grew around her and was very hard to get through.

Another Spirit stood there by Angel's side, looking apologetic as she trapped Lucy in the substance that appeared to be coming from her hands.

Angel had a triumphant sneer.

"Got you!" She shoved the other Spirit out of the way harshly and stalked towards Lucy, flicking a knife into her hands with an unsettling ease. "If my useless pets can't kill you for me, I guess I'll just have to get personal as well."

"Miss Lucy!" Saggtarius brayed in alarm, a few arrows broke off from his protective volley that kept Caelum weaving in the air and launched at the wool keeping her in place. The arrows sank into the fluff and stuck, but it didn't seem to have done anything.

"Figures you only want to get personal after you've gotten someone else to do the hard part." Lucy jibbed, testing her limbs. My legs are stuck, but I can still move one of my hands. She looked at the new Spirit then with narrowed eyes. Something about her seemed familiar...Like she had heard about her.

It hit her like lightning.

"Aries!" The Spirit actually flinched at the sound of her name, looking at her with tear filled eyes.

"I'm sorry, ma'am!" Hearing how afraid and guilty the Spirit sounded, even as Angel took her sweet time coming towards her, Lucy hefted her keys, one golden key in particular glinting in the sunlight.

"Aries, I'll get you back to Leo! I promise, you will see him again!" The words had an affect. As Aries eyes' focused on Loke's key, the wool keeping Lucy's whip hand pinned loosened. It was a poor angle and she couldn't get enough momentum for a good hit, but the sharp tip still slashed Angel across the face. Lucy automatically pulled it back for another blow. Angel was in range of her weapon, but not yet close enough to use her knife. This was her chance.

"You're one to talk about cheap shots." Angel seethed, a nasty smirk forming on her face. "You may pretend to be all high and mighty, but you're just like me. Low blow, tricks and dirty fighting." Lucy cracked her whip again, using the wool she was caught in to stabilize herself.

"I'm a wizard in a combat guild." She said tightly. "I fight people like you because you need to be stopped and no one else can do that. And yeah, I use strategy and tricks all the time. Beats getting into a slug fest with morons who have more magic than brains. But you don't get to say that we are the same because I promise you we're not. We are nothing alike!" Angel managed to retreat to a safe range again, clearly irritated with how long the fight was going on.

 _I wish I could summon two Golden Spirits at once and have Cancer cut me out of this._ Lucy thought, but as she struggled, she was starting to realize something about the wool that held her in place.

If she tried to move quickly and suddenly, it would harden and catch her. But a slow, deliberate movement let her make a little forward progress. She kept this up as she talked. As long as Angel was distracted, and angered by what she said, she wasn't fighting or giving orders to impede Lucy's progress.

"But this?" She held up her keys again, showing the lion headed one. "This wasn't a trick, this was a promise I made a long time ago. Loke is my friend and I promised to do whatever I could to take care of and protect him when I accepted his key. I don't know Gemini, but I promised them that you would never be able to hurt them again. I just promised Aries that she would see her friend again, and I will keep my word! If I go back on a promise to any spirit, how can I be fit to hold their contract and fight beside them!?" Almost there...

Angel's pretty face was looking ugly with wrath as she opened her mouth, cleary to try and order Caelum or Aries to do something. But there came a loud thunk and Angel's eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

Lucy was shocked.

Erza was shocked.

Hibiki was staring in open mouthed wonder.

Virgo simply curtsied to the unconscious Angel, face and voice cold and factual.

"By order of the King, you are stripped of your rights and privileges as a Summoner for mistreating the Spirits under your care and ordering them to harm another Celestial Spirit wizard with lethal force. All your contracts previously established by right of Conquest have been dissolved."

"Virgo, what are you doing here? I didn't summon you!" Lucy was too shocked to think clearly even as the wool around her hips and legs vanished like smoke. The Maiden simply looked at her, chin lifted with pride and satisfaction. There was an actual hint of emotion in her eyes, an echo of life that Lucy had never seen since she first saw her as a pawn of Duke Everlue.

"I decided to return under my own power in case you needed any more assistance."

A surge of warm affection almost choked Lucy with tears as she looked at the pink haired maiden.

From Loke, she knew that a Spirit opening their own gate was a tremendous risk and cost. Aries couldn't have lasted a few days in the world under her own power. It was uncomfortable to the point of pain for whatever Spirit tried it. And since Virgo had already been out earlier that day, and was injured from having faced Erza...

"And I needed it. Thank you, Virgo." The chain wearing maid curtsied deeply to her.

"You're most welcome, Lucy."


	24. G20

Jellal's body was weakened after being unconscious for several weeks. He wasn't sure what was holding him together. But his mind was remarkably clear.

He remembered the last ten years in the Tower of Heaven. He remembered how he had betrayed Erza and hurt his friends. How he had been willing, even eager, to sacrifice her for the sake of reviving Zeref.

Recalling all this gave him a dim sense of guilt, but there was also a clear fact resonating throughout it all, spoken in the voice of a child.

 _It wasn't your fault._

 _None of it was you._

 _They used your body, name and face to do terrible things, but it was never your choice._ He remembered...a certain calmness. A certainty that he wouldn't ever open his eyes again. A desire to not do so, just to stop causing pain to others by existing.

 _Death is not an apology. And even if it were, you aren't that person anymore. You're free. You're changed. You are a kind boy who thought that no one should be without a name. You're a brave soul who lived in hell and still found a reason to smile._

 _You're Jellal again. The real Jellal._

Everything he had done-

 _None of it was you._

He had roused through a combination of his mind finding new truths to hold onto, and the strength being fed back into him.

As he looked around, he saw that he was being treated by two young girls. One face he recognized from the Ten Wizard Saints meetings. It wasn't everyday that a wizard with natural healing magic emerged. Wendy Marvell of Cait Shelter was his attendant.

The other face was equally familiar, but her he had seen in person.

Faerun's eyes were distant and blank. There was an emptiness in her that stabbed at his recently returned conscious. _You...should never look like that._ The child who Erza, fierce, relentless Erza Scarlet, had laid down her arms for and surrendered, was nowhere to be seen in those empty blue eyes. And he knew exactly why.

A new stab of guilt plagued him.

Again, the soft whisper in Faerun's voice.

 _It's not your fault._

Then he looked around properly for the first time. He was in a cave somewhere...? And who was that standing in the back- Brain. If _he_ was here, there was only one thing to do:

Run.

So Jellal had grabbed both of the children and sped away from Brain and the rest of the Oracion Seis as quickly as he could. He was confident that he could face them, even just the absence of Brain would have made him more willing to stand and fight. But he had two children to protect, and he would not start this new life by allowing them to come to harm. Not when he owed them his mind and health.

The blue haired girl seemed to know him, but her concern was for the younger child. Jellal had put Wendy down, but retained his hold on Fae, who lay unresponsive in his grasp, eyes unblinking. The healer laid her hands on her temples and focused.

"She's not hurt, but there's something wrong." Wendy said hesitantly. "She's not acting like herself, and she feels like she's far away."

"I know." Jellal said heavily, brushing hair from her face and carefully sliding her eyes closed. She complied with no resistance. "And I know why." Wendy's large dark eyes focused on him hopefully.

"You know? What is it? What's wrong with her? What can I do to help?"

Jellal cast about for a moment, trying to find some kind of shelter.

"We can talk about it under cover. I don't trust Brain not to send someone out after us, and I can't protect you two from all sides." Wendy gnawed on her lower lip. Then she straightened, took a deep breath through her nose, then nodded.

"I know where we are. I know a place."

"You know this forest?"

"It's my guild's territory. I grew up here." She pointed into the darkened trees. "There's an old fossilized Geshu tree system about half a mile that way. The sap is old, but it still smells strong enough to confuse our scent."

"The snake will still be able to track us through the air." Steel flashed briefly in the girl's eyes.

"Maybe. But it won't be as easy as they think." She cupped her hands together. "Wind Magic: Scatter Trail!" She inhaled and then blew over the tops of her palms.

A brisk wind swirled around Jellal, pulling at his clothes, before moving to Fae and then Wendy. The wind gained hints of blue and green, then swirled together into a sphere of air before splitting in half repeatedly. Once there were 16 much smaller spheres dancing around them, Wendy sent them off with a flick of her wrists, looking tired but satisfied.

"Now when they come here, there will be 17 different ways we could have gone."

"Very clever." Jellal congratulated. "But best we hurry. We'll be faster if I carry you. Let's go to that forest of yours."

-vVv-

Lyon had always admired his fellow pupil in Ice Make Magic. Gray's creativity and head for strategy made him a formidable opponent. He'd demonstrated both of those traits plus impressive power in their cooperative defeat of Racer. But right now...

Gray was looming over a man who was outright cowering before the elemental wrath he was emitting. His magic curled up his arms like pale blue frost on his skin, and his expression was murderous as he regarded the man currently trapped up to his neck in ice. Said prisoner's lips were starting to turn blue.

"W-W-we were paid to grab the girl and deliver her to a member of the Oracion Seis-" Gray flexed his fingers, the ice encasing him grew up in sharp points, pressing around his neck in a subtle threat.

"You weren't listening. All of them already told me that. I want something more."

"What...!?" His voice squeaked up an octave as the ice rose a little higher.

"I want to know how they contacted you. I want to know the drop point." With each sentence, Gray's fingers twitched a little closer to a closed fist and the crystalline prison tightened a little more. The air around him started to steam as intense cold radiated from his body. Lyon wasn't bothered by the change in temperature, but he knew that someone standing too close to Gray would be subjected to the sub zero temperatures of a master class Ice Wizard.

"I want to know what they offered as a reward. I want to know what kind of soulless scumbag would think it was ok to rip a little girl away from her home and family. But mostly? I want to know where Fae is. And if I don't start getting answers, then you're going to get a nasty case of frostbite." Gray's hands shifted. The pillar of ice shifted in answer, leaving enough to entrap the now terrified and shivering wizard and creating the enormous jaws of a bear trap, ready to snap shut and snap his neck like a twig.

Lyon made sure his expression matched Gray's as the prisoner glanced at him, desperate for some way out.

Ur once said: _Your passion and your magic are meant to work together. You are learning Maker magic, something meant to create. And without control, and deliberation, you will only succeed in destruction_.

The sight before him made Lyon all the more certain that of the two of them, Gray had internalized their master's teachings better. The whole scene was set up to squeeze the information they wanted from the enemy wizards.

The frigid air, completely unseasonable even for autumn.

The chill set those not immune to cold on edge, made them instinctively hunch down for warmth and comfort, allowing those standing, as he and Gray were, to have the appearance of superiority.

The rapid, nervous breaths of their prisoners filling the air with white mist.

The cold air was enough to make their breath steam, but Gray was catching it and maintaining it. The haze surrounding them moved and shifted, casting an uncertain light over the scene. It was thickened in some places to completely isolate their prisoners, who had all been gagged by freezing their lips together. It made for quite a menacing picture when coupled with the occasional whimpers.

The blades of brittle grass coated in frost strong enough to turn them into needles.

The area was made uncomfortable. Even if they were only questioning one prisoner at a time, the others were never left in peace, or in the right mindset to confer with one another, too focused on their own pain and terror.

Gray had produced all of this with a handful of gestures and murmurs. His focus: Find Celeste D Faerun.

The guild mark of their prisoners identified them as members of Grey Chimera, the guild Blue Pegasus had indicated as the one who kidnapped the girl attached to Fairy Tail. Lyon was standing guard over the other three who were still conscious.

"You heard me ask your friends all these questions. You got anything else to say that they haven't already told me?"

The look in Gray's eyes made Lyon bite his tongue. There was a little girl depending on them right now, and their communications network had gone down moments earlier. The Pegasus airship, Christina, had been brought down by a devastating blast of malicious magical power from the ground. He and Gray had hurried to the spot, using the magicycles left from their combat with Racer, and there they had found a dozen members of Gray Chimera both dead and alive.

The man's teeth were chattering, whether in cold or fear, Lyon couldn't quite tell. But he began to talk, terror driving him.

"Master Angelo was coming to talk to Brain about another project,"

"Your guild master is here?"

"He was! He's dead, Brain slaughtered him like a sheep! We found him, he was unconscious and we started to try and revive him when all of a sudden, he woke up! He asked us what had been happening. Angelo caught him up, and as soon as he told him, Brain killed him! He fired on the airship, stole Angelo's teleport token, and vanished!"

"Brain, the guild master of the Oracion Seis was the one who paid you off to kidnap the girl?" Lyon affirmed.

The man nodded, trying to watch both of them and the jaws of the trap that he was situated in.

"Why?" Gray asked flatly. "Why Fae? What did you know about her?" Lyon thought it was far more relevant that Brain had been capable of speaking calmly to his former allies one second, and then been brutally attacking them the next. But Gray's priorities weren't about to shift, so he said nothing.

"I-I don't-" The trap's jaws twitched warningly. "I don't know! Brain, he seemed to know a lot about her, he told us everything! What guild she was with, how to restrain her until he got to her. He had everything planned out!"

Lyon considered this new information.

From what he knew about Celeste D Faerun, she had been a ward of Fairy Tail for several years now, and was very close to Gray and his group of friends in particular. He had gotten the story that the loud mouthed fire eater, Natsu, was the one who brought her into the guild. Before that, her life was a complete mystery. No name, no traceable identity, and brand new magic in a girl with no idea how to control it. A nobody. A perfect blank slate.

The ward system was meant to protect young children from threats like Brain. So if he had managed to keep track of her, then that had to mean that he somehow knew who had retrieved her and where they had taken her. While it was possible he had used spies in the Light Guilds, Lyon had a gut feeling that there was something more to this.

"Have you taken anyone else for him? Any other children?" He asked, following a hunch, eyes narrowed. Gray's dark eyes met his and for an instant, the same thought flashed across them both.

"Just...in the last few years." The man said, flinching as his lips and fingers started to turn blue. "He used other guilds before we came into his employ."

"So you're child traffickers." Gray said in a tone that might have been thoughtful if it weren't disgusted and outraged. "Allying with any member of the Balaam Alliance is already going to get you at least 20 years behind bars but you're not even going to last a month. I've heard some stories about how people like you are treated in the prison system. It'd honestly be nicer of me to kill you right now." Gray leaned forward slightly, turning his wrist slightly and flexing his fingers to bring the sharp teeth of his trap to rest just under the helpless man's jaw.

"But...I'm not going to be nice." He then relaxed his grip, releasing the magic that was keeping the ice sharp and unnaturally strong. They had information, now they just needed a course of action.

"Ice Make: Concussion." Lyon produced a hammer and quickly knocked their prisoner unconscious, pulling out a beacon and setting it down. Since their original objective was to capture the Oracion Seis and their satellite guilds, they had been given bags of lacrima tags from the Rune Knights that would send out a signal for a team to come and collect their unconscious prisoners, allowing them to continue their work without hindrance.

Gray didn't protest Lyon's actions. He seemed tense, brow furrowed as he surveyed the area. It was still white with the magical ice they had employed to capture the mages.

"Gray, we have to keep moving. We're blind here, and anyone we find in this forest will be a better source of information than these."

"Can you see it?" The question made Lyon huff in exasperation.

"Now is not the time for you dramatics, Gray. Just spit out what you want to say."

"Look under the ice. This clearing used to be half the size that it is now. It's been burned open recently. Natsu fought Brain right here, not even an hour ago."

"And?"

"How could he be able to move after losing to a pissed off Natsu? Not even a former Ten Wizard Saint got up after a throw down like that. So why could he?" Gray put his hands together, shifting his stance. "We need eyes, and need to get back to the Christina and get her back in the air. Brain stole a teleportation spell from these morons. He could literally be anywhere right now."

-vVv-

Wendy was tired.

Seriously, she had never called on her Sky Dragon magic as much as she had today. Even the small amount of pure Wind Magic she had picked up was drained by laying down their cover trails to allow her and Jellal to make good their escape and hide. All she wanted to do was lay down and sleep.

 _I will find what did this to you!_ She snapped internally, pushing her limits as much as she dared and then going a step further. Her hands were laid on either side of Fae's head and she was scanning for some sign of the head injury that changed Fae's personality so much. It had to be that, instead of her being some kind of long term double agent...

She couldn't believe that this walking, silent, soulless being was who Fae was really meant to be.

But that belief was becoming more real the longer she went without finding any sign of a traumatic injury.

Charla would have forced her to stop and rest long ago, but Wendy gritted her teeth and performed another scan of Fae's head.

"I know you're still in there...!" She hissed. "I promised your friends I'd help bring you back to them. And this isn't you!"

Blank, expressionless eyes looked back at her.

"Any change?" Jellal's voice made Wendy lose her concentration and the diagnostic spell faded out as her energy flagged without her determination to keep it up.

"No..." She said, her voice sounding very small. "She's perfectly healthy, her magic has recovered from the suppression cuffs, but she still hasn't responded to anything I've said." Jellal's face hardened into a grim line.

"You've called her by name." _What else would I call her by?_ Wendy looked at him askance.

"You said you'd tell me what was wrong." Jellal sighed, settling down on a fallen tree limb.

"Everything. Everything is wrong. The only good way to explain what is happening to Faerun right now would be to say that Brain has been in the business of taking children and raising them to suit his purposes for a very long time now. Faerun is far from the first he has gotten hold of."

"So he did this to her."

"Yes, and to others...You've heard about what transpired at the Tower of Heaven." The girl fidgeted slightly with her hands. This was a subject she was nervous about discussing with her former protector, especially since while he seemed to know and recognize her, the personal relationship was absent.

"Yeah. They're saying it was all your fault." Jellal flinched, slight but noticeable. "I'm sorry!" Wendy said quickly, guilt poking her conscious.

"It's alright, you can't know the whole story...The tower was funded and fueled by the Balam Alliance. All the money and materials came from their profits as well as the manpower used to build it. The satellites guilds were capturing were bringing in new people every day. But some were specifically assigned to go capture children. The stress filled life they would be subjected to provided the ideal ground to spark their magic into activating and allowing them to potentially become wizards. That is what happened to me, and many others. This was not the case with Faerun, though that is not what she was called."

Wendy simply sat, spellbound, and listened.

-vVv-

 _I was floating, unable to move and only able to watch._

 _Brain had said something, a series of words that didn't make any sense, but that made me so afraid that my mental shield couldn't stand up to it. A thousand and one feelings were pouring through me, mostly dark and bitter. And once that rush was over, there was resignation._

" _G2.0, go to Jellal and rewrite his memories of what occurred at the Tower of Heaven. It will trigger his recall, and allow the plan to unleash Nirvana to progress." I wanted to yell at Brain to go to hell. That I was a prisoner, but not his slave._

 _My legs, my hands, my everything, refused to obey me. With horror and numb shock, I watched my hands reach out and place themselves on either side of Jellal's head._

 _I had toyed with the idea, the possibility of rewriting someone's memories in order to change a story. It had always given me a strange, sick, awed feeling. As though I wondered if I could do it, and at the same time, didn't wish to do it._

 _Brain was still speaking._

" _You will write that Jellal was a willing member of the Balam Alliance, and that all that transpired was his plan."_

 _He wanted me to write a story into Jellal's mind that would make him believe he was the bad guy almost everyone thought he was. He wanted me to lie, and take advantage of my gifts and Jellal's vulnerability to turn him into a pawn for this man._

 _Rebellion fluttered impotently inside my chest, screams of denial and pleading echoed in my mind as I fought the commands that I couldn't find it in myself to resist. Something inside of me was responding to Brain and forcing me to obey him._

 _Sinking my magic into Jellal's mind deeply enough to do what I was being ordered to would take some time. And during that time, my mind, which was still free, was directing all other parts of my magic elsewhere._

 _Why was I listening to this monster like some kind of soulless robot? How had he gotten this kind of power over me?_

 _There were no answers._

 _So I settled for struggling and fighting with all the mental strength I possessed. Brain was not my master, I was a person, and a free woman at that! He did not get to tell me what to do, and I was not going to let him turn Jellal into some kind of soulless monster!_

 _I stood, my shoulders cramping as I used my subconscious to try and fight free. Muscles were twitching madly in my arms, and legs._

" _G2.0. You will do as you are told."_ Not like I have a choice in the matter! _I raged at him, wishing for Simon's gift of telepathy to let Brain know exactly what I was thinking. I could probably have cursed him in at least a dozen different languages._

 _I could see Cobra, Eric, out of the corner of my eye. Cubellious was hissing, shifting her coils over the ground in obvious agitation, but the man was watching me with grief._

" _Cobra, verify G2.0's thoughts. Is the reset complete?" Could he hear me now? Would he tell Brain that somehow, he had my body but didn't have my mind? That I was still stuck inside this useless sack of flesh, blood and bones?_

 _My eyes met his for a second._

 _I saw resolve blossom in them for a split second before it was gone again. Did I imagine it?_

" _Ain't nothing out of the ordinary that I can hear." He said with a perfectly straight face and a natural tone of voice._

 _ **He lies. He can hear you.**_

 _The voice of my magic was slow, sluggish in a way that it never had been before._

Thank you, Eric. _I thought deliberately. Then I turned my thoughts back to trying to find a way to reclaim my body._

" _Likely a lingering effect of her time spent among other wizards. She developed a strong personality in order to integrate among them effectively and her body is still affected by it..." Brain sounded as though he were musing this to himself. An observation on a long term experiment. The Poison Dragon Slayer wasn't looking at me, but at his guild master and foster father. The flash of resolve came again before it was swept away by idle curiosity._

 _ **He wants to help you.**_

" _How come you didn't make more kids like her? It seems like she's a resounding success." This question rang as out of character of Eric. He normally stayed as quiet and invisible as possible while around Brain. But there was still a touch of the monologuing spell I had put on Brain earlier._

 _The question caught, and Brain started to talk._

 _A surge of fierce gratitude blurred through my thoughts, and I suddenly had to consciously fight back the tears that wanted to form. They were indicative of emotion, and Brain wouldn't have wanted emotion in a tool. And that seemed like who he was seeing me as right now. A well made tool he had handed off to a middle man to polish and sharpen before stealing it back once it was finished._

 _I had gotten a very good idea of the kind of life Eric had led at Brain's hands. Even if he wasn't gearing up and fighting for me, the fact that he was willing to do even this much for a stranger meant a great deal._

 _ **You helped answer his prayer.**_

" _Not all of them were young enough when the conditioning was begun to make it take. G2.0 was with us from two years old, there was plenty of to imprint the triggers needed to have her be useful. Then, of course, children at that age are so fragile that most of her batch didn't survive the lacrima implantation. All of those that did didn't have magic compatible to the lacrima they were given. It was a calculated chance that one or two of the group would survive in a useful state."_

 _ **There were originally 20.**_

 _And none of them had died in peaceful ways. And even after they were dead, there was no rest for them. I wanted to throw up, but not even my gag reflex would respond. While it did help me keep my secret, I hated it in this instance. It was yet another thing that I didn't have control over._

It's not me. _I told myself._ I'm not G2.0. I'm Fae. Not the same person. I am a Fairy Tail wizard. I am not a pawn! This is not my life!

 _The realization flashed through my mind like a lightning bolt._

 _I couldn't read my own past. Now I knew why. I always tried to read the past of Celeste D. Faerun, but that was the wrong story. She, I, only existed in my time with Fairy Tail. That was my life. I couldn't read anything from before that because there was nothing to see for me. I had never seen anything because I had been looking for the wrong person. I hadn't known what name to look for, and the identity I had made, Celeste D Faerun, belonged only in the here and now._

 _Before I had been reborn as Fae, I had had a name, or some kind of designation. I simply hadn't known what it was, and had never thought to look for it. The connection was there, I could track people through an identity change like I had with Loke. But I had simply never tried to look...because I was happy as Fae and ultimately, that was enough for me to not sweat the details of where I came from originally._

 _But now I needed to know to try and work out how to get out of this mess. So, I started looking at G2.0. At how she had begun, and what had brought her to where she met Natsu and I was born._

 _It came in short, fitful spurts. G2.0's purpose may have been to gather information, but it wasn't to retain, or respond to it beyond that. A living, walking camera, but nothing to process the meaning of what she saw_

 _I saw a small family in a coastal town. There were a few children and a baby. And I knew the baby was G2.0. The parents' faces were blurred, but they gave off a sense of love for their youngest daughter and her older siblings. There was another face that passed through her life, but his features gave an unmistakable sense of sinister consequences._

 _There was horror, and cries of pain and confusion. The family was gathered with the father doing his best to protect them all. I watched with a distant sense of sadness as the children, all under the age of ten, were separated from their parents. But the young girl, now a toddler, was singled out._

 _I tasted her fear as if it was my own as she looked up at the unfamiliar faces, clinging to the comfort of her sister's arms and trying to not cry. One man whose face was literally draped in darkness frightened her more than anything._

 _Then they took her sister away and she was alone._

 _They called her G2.0, and not by her name. They claimed she had been born to the dark faced man. That he was her father. They said she was supposed to help them free the world from the illusion of civilization. And after so long of hearing these stories, with a mind that could do nothing but remember, she started to believe it. It was easier to believe that they were good people, that they were helping her, and that she had the potential to help them. It was better to believe that, than to recall the truth that they were the reason she no longer had a family. That they had made her alone, and that they were destroying her and remaking her into something she wasn't._

 _Her story ended the same way it had begun: With violence._

 _The group of captives was being herded together. News had come about a powerful wizard in the area and they were gathering their strength to relocate out of sight. The newer adult captives were resisting, but G2.0 moved without protest to where she was told by her father. No one had put chains on her in years. They simply ordered, and she obeyed if they used the phrase she had been told by father that meant they were allies._

 _The impassioned cry of one captive, an older man who had somehow survived a full year._

" _Girl, this is not who you are!"_

Yes it is.

 _Being a crying, broken child hurt. G2.0 didn't feel pain. G2.0 didn't cry. G2.0 didn't disobey._

" _Run, girl! Run! Get away and be free from this place!"_

I...I can?

 _G2.0 broke._

 _Somewhere, underneath the years of conditioning and training, there had been a small, fragile thread of self that refused to vanish. It had been buried for a long time, she had buried it herself to try and keep herself from being hurt. But the call woke something in her. It wasn't an explicit command, but it was one that she actually wanted to follow for once. So, she took the excuse. It was an order, and she followed orders._

He isn't father, or one of the allies. We cannot obey him!

 _One voice protested in her mind. But a new voice suggested:_

Why not?

 _Now there were two people, two little girls in the same body. G2.0 was seven with a harsh life behind her, and this new girl, young and innocent from her long stay in the darkness, was the equivalent of a newborn with a far more developed mind than she ought to have. That lasted only for a few seconds. Then she saw what lay in G2.0's past and recoiled from it with abject horror._

I refuse to have that be my life!

 _Armed with a power that could only come from desperation, she started to run for freedom. She wove through a crowd of people, then a forest of trees. She ran, and ran until she could run no further. She tripped, and fell, cracking her head against a stone when she tried to tumble back to her feet._

 _In pain, vision blurring, and struggling to keep her recently unlocked emotions in check, G2.0 reasserted her control, guiding the exhausted body they shared to a deadfall to take shelter._

-vVv-

 _ **We should go back. Father will want to see us.**_

 _He's not my father. And he's not yours either._

 _ **How would you know? You weren't even born an hour ago.**_

 _I...I just know. That place was not good. We need to find a new place. New people. Somewhere where they will take care of us._

 _ **There is no one who can be trusted. Only Father knows who can be trusted, and if we are not with him, we will not know either.**_

 _He's not my father! He's a horrible person who killed your family and destroyed your life, and you've been with him for so long that you believe he saved you when he did that!_

A nameless little girl clutched her bleeding head, quaking as she fought the older, more disciplined force that wanted to retrace their steps and go back.

 _I'm not going back! You can't make me go back!_

Her desperation was enough to let her lock her body down into motionlessness. Neither fleeing, nor returning. She stayed like that for hours.

Darkness fell, the night chill set in. Sheltered under the bulk of an old tree in the late spring, she passed an uncomfortable night, jerking in and out of sleep. Whenever she would drift off, the other force would come in and try to make her body walk back to captivity like a sheep to the slaughter.

They kept up their argument.

The older voice reasoned that the life they knew was superior to the uncertainty they faced alone. The newborn identity insisted they needed to find someone new and that just about anyone would be better than who they had been with before. Neither side was willing to concede.

It was approaching the daybreak when they heard someone coming. They didn't move, but in spite of that, they were discovered.

A boy with a curious expression and salmon colored hair lifted the massive hollow tree trunk they had been hiding under.

"A kid? I thought I smelled something. Watcha doing under here?"

"Hiding." The young voice managed to make the lips move, the throat to vocalize and the tongue to shape the sound properly.

"Pretty well too. If I couldn't smell you, I'd never have guessed you were there. Come on out." He braced the log with one hand, beckoning her forward. "We're not gonna hurt you. I'm Natsu, and this is Happy." The girl then realized there was a blue cat like creature hovering by the boy, Natsu's side, on white wings.

 _They will be better. Let's go with them._

 _ **No. Too much uncertainty. We don't know them, we don't know what they might do to us!**_

She tried to crawl out, but managed only a fitful twitch before her head rang with pain like a church bell.

"Oh no, that looks bad." The cat, Happy, observed, flitting around her. "Here, come on, I got you." With Natsu holding their escape route open, and Happy assisting her unwilling limbs in moving, the girl managed to get into the open. She wanted to talk, but G2.0's unwillingness to trust them kept her silent even as Natsu cleaned and bandaged her injuries.

"We're gonna need to get you to a doctor to look at that." He told her, hands surprisingly gentle as he tucked the wrap in place. Her shoulders tightened and she hunched down slightly. "Relax, I'm gonna take you somewhere safe. You'll be ok, I promise."

 _Should I believe him?_

 _It would be great if I had some way of knowing if he really wanted to help me...And if going back was the right thing to do or not. I just...I want to know what's true. What actually happened, and what it means._

 _I just want to know...I-_

It felt like glass shattering. Like a window in a cold basement just blew open and something warm and alive flooded her. G2.0 tried to close the window, but the way was made. She was forever changed.

They were walking down the cobbled street, Natsu carrying her in his arms. They had departed the train station and Natsu had picked her up as soon as he had recovered.

"Are you going to help me?" She asked in a small voice, uncertain of what answer she would receive.

Natsu looked down at her with a smile.

"Yeah. I promised you, you're gonna be fine. I'm gonna look after you."

 _ **Etherious Natsu Dragneel never goes back on his word.**_ The voice had changed. _**He means it...**_

Clarity flooded both halves of the divided mind.

Their previous life had been hell. They had been less that a slave, they had been an experiment that resulted in a useful tool. They had had no identity or value beyond their ability to retain information. And if they collected that information, 'Father' would use it to hurt people. Good people like the one who had just promised, sincerely, that he would help them. The first person in the world that they could remember having done so.

'Father' was a man of ambition who had seen her as a tool to bring about his own selfish designs of power.

Every step Natsu took, a new piece of information drifted into her mind.

 _ **He taught Happy how to fish.**_

 _ **He loves eating briquets while they are on fire.**_

 _ **He misses his father.**_

 _ **He wants to help you and see you safe.**_

 _I can trust him..._ The girl's relief was inexpressible.

But G2.0's was even greater. She could see clearly what her life had been like. And it wasn't good. But this...looked like it was taking a turn for the better.

 _ **I do not know what to call you. But you are new. You are...inexperienced in the world. And you don't need to have my burdens weighing you down as you go forward.**_

Like mist evaporating in the sun, the nameless child watched her memories start to fade.

The beach, the family, the pain, the darkness.

It all disappeared.

 _ **I will guide you, but this is your life.**_

 _ **Write your own story. My part is over.**_

 _ **Now it's your turn.**_

 _-_ vVv _-_

A blue haired girl and man both started as Celeste D Faerun opened her eyes.


	25. Safe?

Loke didn't understand why Cobra's movements changed so abruptly until he heard what he had. A roar that sounded vaguely like a name.

Natsu, carried by Happy, flew into the clearing. Cobra broke off from attacking Loke and moved to intercept Natsu instead. The flying snake's heavy tail smacked the pair out of the air. Loke twisted one of his rings to create a twister to keep them away from the unmerciful ground.

"Natsu, Happy, you ok?" He verified, keeping an eye on his tricky opponent. Most of his outer jacket had been melted by the acidic poison spat by the Dragon Slayer, he assumed he was a Slayer at least, he fought a bit like Natsu.

"Aye sir." Happy replied woozily, shaking his head and sending some dust flying from his fur. He steeled himself and recalled his wings, zipping into the air to gain momentum before picking Natsu up again. Natsu didn't respond, his burning eyes were fixed on the other man, a slight rumble coming off of him.

"Hey, you on the snake." His fists clashed together in a burst of orange fire as he growled his question as he moved forward: "Where's Fae?"

Cobra tilted his head, listening to something else that Loke couldn't hear.

"Be careful what you think, Natsu. He can listen to everything going on inside your head." This made Natsu bare his teeth in a parody of a grin.

"Then he knows I'm gonna kick his ass unless he tells me where Fae is."

"Why? Can't you smell her anymore? That's apparently how you got here, by following your nose." The taunt was there, buried in his voice.

"All I can smell right now is that gunk you've been throwing around. The scent's gone!" Natsu spat, the air and the ground around him starting to steam faintly as grass withered beneath his feet.

Loke could still sense vaguely what direction Orion had gone in, if he could start after it, he would be able to find them. They couldn't be that far away. But as long as Cobra was watching, he couldn't go without cluing him in to where she was.

"Natsu: You take this guy and I'll find Fae." Loke said, stripping off the rest of his ruined jacket and leaving him on only his button down shirt. "I'd have softened him up for you some more, but he's got better wings than I do." The snake was a huge asset in maneuverability and offense and despite Cobra not being able to understand his thoughts, he was extremely good at predicting his moves.

Natsu was a brawler who specialized in beating difficult odds and had a spontaneous, unpredictable fighting style. This, coupled with the fact that he was one of the most mobile combatants in the guild thanks to his partnership with Happy, gave him much better odds against Cobra than Loke on foot and alone, even with his protection against mind reading. Especially since it got one of them out to find Fae. Orion was strong for a Silver Spirit, but he didn't think he would be able to do much against a wizard of Jellal's caliber if he had someone to protect along the way.

Quick footwork and a helpful screen of fire from Natsu gave Loke the cover that he needed to make a break for the forest after Orion.

Running through the forest as quickly as he could, Loke started calling out Fae's name. He only had a rough idea of where Orion had gone...

It seemed like an impossibly short time later that Loke heard a loud roar.. _That's Natsu alright, no one's got a set of pipes like he does. Dragon lungs and all._

After that, there came a final, bright flare of fire, and then silence.

Loke knew Natsu was loud, no matter what he was doing. And the conflict he had left behind was one Natsu would point blank refuse to lose as long as Fae's safety was still uncertain. That was why when he could no longer hear the echoes of a fight, he was certain the fight between the two Dragon Slayers was over.

He had been moving through the forest, trying to pick up some sort of trail of where Fae had gone from there, but it was slow going without Orion to point him in the right direction.

He had slowed down once he concluded that whoever had taken Fae was taking steps to hide their trail. Without Orion, he had to rely on physical clues instead of a scent trail.

Moving more slowly and carefully, Loke stopped in a clearing, eyes narrowed at the ground.

 _Human footprints?_ There were some unusual skid marks in the forest loam. As though someone moving at high speeds had stopped very suddenly. He had seen similar marks when Jet was coming down from a high speed run.

 _Ok...He stopped here._

Loke heard the brush rustle and his hands came up, powering with magic in case it was an enemy.

Orion bounded out of the brush, tongue lolling with exertion, but eyes bright and determined.

" _Leo. They have laid false scent trails from here to confuse pursuit. I've run down four of them, but there are many more."_ False trails. They were expecting an enemy to be trying to track them by scent. Likely the big snake.

"If we can't track them by scent alone, look for prints, or someplace where the ground was disturbed that aligns with a scent trail. What can you tell about the people with Fae?"

" _One is a man, recently injured, but recovered and very strong. The other is another girl-pup of near the same age as your fairy princess. She smells unusual, not fully human, like the fire eater that accompanies your wizard. She was very low on magic power when they stopped here."_

The man was Jellal according to Cobra. Apparently he wasn't dead. And the fact that he was running away from the Oracion Seis meant that he probably wasn't on their side. That didn't necessarily make him a friend to Fairy Tail, though...

The only reasons for a strange girl to smell anything like Natsu would be if they were related or if she had similar magic. Natsu's only claim to family was the dragon Igneel...And Loke had met several other people who could be qualified as dragon slayers. It was a bit of a stretch, but maybe the other girl was a Dragon Slayer like Natsu...

"Alright, show me where the other trails are." Orion was a skilled hunter, but he was still a hound, and that meant he relied on scent. Loke could remember a time, back before his aspect had shifted to mirror humanity, when he had been more comfortable relying his sense of smell too. But he was mostly human now, and that meant he was a sight-based predator now.

 _Find the one trail that has disturbed ground from something, or someone, running at magical speeds, and we'll find Fae, Jellal and the mystery girl._

 _-_ vVv _-_

Brain stood in their original base, magic circles glowing around him. Several potions and paints lay before him on a small ledge and he was hurriedly preparing a dark paste with the ingredients before him. Only one seal remained. He had calculated that he would lose at least two in this endeavor, but it seemed he had underestimated the light guilds. Now he was down to his last line of defense against the darker parts of his mind.

Angel, Racer, Hoteye, Midnight and he himself had all fallen in battle, releasing the seals tied to their life forces. Only good fortune had allowed Brain to wake in time to even attempt this. Only Cobra remained awake and undefeated. And with how the Light wizards were fighting, he didn't like the odds.

His fingers were covered in paint as he raised his hand to his face to reapply a basic seal-

The last Seal of Prayers burned on his skin.

"No...No...!" Zero could defeat his enemies easily, but he would also destroy Brain's plans in the process. He was intimately familiar with them, after all. But Zero was only a force of pure destruction and whimsy. He couldn't see anything organized without wanting to ruin it, leaving Brain to clean up after him when he woke.

Dark paint smeared across his cheeks in uneven streaks as Brain clutched his head, fighting with all of his faculties to keep Zero locked away in the mental cage he had constructed.

 _Oh, that's so sweet and naive of you._ Zero cackled in the back of his mind, sauntering forward with confidence and a horrifying grin. _You honestly think you'll get control again? Oh no, I've got my own ideas. You had a wonderful tool at your disposal and you didn't think to use it when you had the chance._

 _I'd worry if I were you. G2.0 has no reason to care about you, after all._

-vVv-

 _ **You've been catatonic for five hours.**_

My magic, or...G2.0 reported.

 _Note to self: Give her a better name._ Since I was aware of her, and knew that I owed the fact that I had an actual childhood to her, I felt a new name was the least I could do for her. Anything but what Brain had called her.

"Faerun?" A girl's voice sounded and an unfamiliar face appeared in my field of vision. Hope and worry filled her voice and her hands looked like they wanted to wring in distress.

 _ **Wendy Marvell of Cait Shelter. Sky Dragon Slayer.**_

 _...That means I'm up to how many Dragon Slayers now? Five? No, six with Sting. It feels like they're just falling out of the sky lately..._

"I'm awake." I felt like my voice should have been hoarse, but then I belatedly remembered that all my defiant screaming had been internal.

Relief flashed across her face and she sat down.

"Oh good, we were worried. You haven't responded to anything the whole time." _We?_

That...that was right, I remembered the last thing I had seen before Brain reactivated G2 with her conditioning phrase was Jellal in a magical coma. It was a miracle that he was alive at all, what with being exposed to enough raw magical energy to light up the capital for months. He was here too?

 _ **He rescued you and Wendy.**_

The forest around us was mostly made of stone, and the trees were utterly massive. Every part of them was about twenty times larger than the average tree back home. We were sheltering under one, in a shallow cave made of roots with the large trunk forming a solid roof overhead.

Jellal was standing guard at the entrance of the cave.

My first thought was that he looked better. He wasn't the distant, calculating mastermind that had arranged for my 'testing' in the tower. He looked hesitantly relieved to see I was awake. Like he wanted to express more relief, but wasn't sure if it was his place to do so. Considering he had been partially possessed for most of his formative years, and had a lousy life before hand, I forgave him for not knowing what to do when I got up and moved.

Really, even Wendy seemed a little confused when I hugged him.

"Ah...I'm glad you're alright?" He asked, looking sheepish. Like he didn't really know how to express relief, or if it was even right for him to show it. I glanced up at him, smiling.

I was feeling good. My identity crisis was behind me. I had answers as to where I had actually come from. I had decided who I was, and my magic was pretty much recovered from being suppressed.

"I am too. Thank you for saving us."

He had no idea what to do in response to this, so he settled for clasping my shoulder stiffly. I giggled a little at his awkwardness and heard a matching sound behind me. I threw a smile back at Wendy. The girl was about my age, and had the aura of a cinnamon roll. That is: Someone who was so unfailingly nice that it should be illegal. And she didn't have the aura of lethality that Mirajane could project so casually so she fell under the super-sweet category.

"I'm Fae, but I guess you both already know that. And you're Wendy. Or at least if I read it right, you are." She nodded, smile lighting up her face for a brief instant.

"Yeah..." She was still sitting down and was clearly very tired. Glancing back through what she had been doing, I saw how much of her energy had gone into both healing Jellal and trying to find what was wrong with me.

 _She was bottoming out and was still putting more power into trying to heal me from a traumatic brain injury that didn't exist. And she refused to stop._

 _She'll fit right in in Fairy Tail._

Granted, I wasn't certain if she one of the new members I had seen coming. Or if Jellal's name being cleared would make him one of them. (Because like hell was I letting him get arrested after this.) But she would fit right in. Even if she was already a member of another guild, I could easily see myself being friends with her.

"So, what exactly has been happening while I've been...out?" I asked my companions.

"The Oracion Seis is still planning on raising Nirvana and sowing chaos and ruin across the country and then some." Jellal said gravely. "They probably intended on using me to do so, and so they stole the both of you in order to get me back on my feet again."

"And the guild alliance had broken off of trying to intercept the Oracion Seis and the dark guilds to try and find you before they used you as leverage to make us surrender." Wendy added. "Jura and I were fighting one of their members, he said his name was Hoteye. And Gray and Lyon said they beat another one called Racer together." Jellel's brows furrowed.

"Just two of the six have been defeated?" _Actually..._ "Good...that means that we only have Brain to deal with."

"I'm confused." Wendy stated, head tilting. "Isn't the whole point of the alliance to defeat all of the Oracion Seis?"

"Working towards a common goal is the function of any alliance. And yes, the defeat of the Oracion Seis is the goal. Or it was before I...left the Magic Council. " _Left...Yeah, let's call it that._ "But I doubt that the Magic Council or the other guilds knows about the Seal of Prayers on Brain."

 _ **Seal of Prayers. A versatile piece of magic that is used to lock something away, and separates the keys. Typically, into actual tokens. Brain's has living locks that are all attuned to the other members of the guild that he personally trained.**_

I then read what this seal was holding back.

My face blanched and my empty stomach shifted in an attempt to be sick.

 _And I thought Brain was bad by himself...He's just the watered down version of the real bad guy!_

Brain had a Jekell-Hyde experience where he had attempted to open up his mind in order to perform more complex magic by himself. A crude, but accurate analogy would be he gave himself a couple extra mental 'limbs' to work with when using magic.

And it had worked. Brain was now capable of casting High Magic, magic where you had to focus on dozens of different points and facets, with childish ease. His processing power was kicked to new heights. And he had gotten to that point in five years instead of the forty or fifty that it took most wizards, if they managed it at all.

But like any mutation, it had unforeseen side effects. And it was a mutation. An unstable one that slowly started to break down because his mind just wasn't capable of handling it. Humans aren't supposed to be able to think like that. So in order to effectively use and maintain his new 'hands', Brain also created a mental avatar separate from his own, yet tied to him. This new personality was the equivalent of a computer at first, emotionless and logical. An AI whose purpose was to process what it was given and hand it back to Brain. But unlike a computer, or an Archive system, Brain still had emotions and feelings and hadn't thought to put measures in place to keep this other personality from absorbing them. And the only emotions he used were what fueled his magic and his desire to use it: A manic desire for knowledge and power above all else. These dark emotions imprinted onto the blank slate of the intellectual spirit in Brain's subconscious. After some years, it had surfaced as Zero.

Zero guilt. Zero mercy. Zero humanity.

Brain didn't like competition for his ambitions, even from himself. And Zero was not just competition, but his superior who emerged whenever he slept, or his concentration lapsed. So he had devised this version of the Seal of Prayers to lock Zero down before he grew strong enough to assert himself as the primary personality and force Brain into the back seat permanently.

Where was Brain? I suddenly felt a keen, and vested interest in keeping track of him.

 _ **Natsu defeated Brain.**_

 _That's...good?_

 _ **Zero has been active for the past hour.**_

 _...I believe this is where cursing would be appropriate, but I'm too scared to._

-vVv-

"How could you let her be taken!?" The enraged white feline shrieked. It would have been amusing were the situation not so serious. Jura was being treated for his injuries by Sherry and had just informed the group that Wendy had been abducted during their fight with Hoteye before Jura had defeated him. "How could you!? She's a child, you were supposed to protect her! Now these ruffians have two children in their hands!" Carla was on the verge of flying into Jura's face with claws bared when Erza caught her by the back of her dress.

"The situation is grave, Carla, but blaming others will not help the girls, nor will losing your head. Both Fae and Wendy are resourceful and clever, and Wendy grew up in this area. They'll find a way to go to ground and hide. Right now: You are our best chance of finding them and the remaining members of the Oracion Seis so that they can be safe."

"How many are left anyway?" Lucy wondered, looking around at her allies. She, Erza and Carla had heard the crash of the Blue Pegasus airship and had rushed to search for survivors. They had arrived in time to see Lyon and Gray pull Aria and Sherry from the wreckage and lay them with the others.

Lucy continued her thought when she realized everyone was watching her.

"I mean, there were only six of them to start, at least from the main guild. I know Erza and I took out two. Jura got one..."

"Gray and I defeated one as well." Lyon interjected.

"Everyone, point out the pictures of the wizards you defeated." Hibiki proposed, pulling out his Archive magic and producing a screen with half a dozen images on it. "Thanks to our interrogating some of the lesser members of the dark guilds, we now have sketches and names to go by."

"Yeah, only if you trust them." Gray remarked acidly.

"My Truth parfum has yet to fail me." Ichiya said boisterously. "Even I am not totally immune to it's effects."

Lucy made a mental note to never get near Ichiya ever again. She did _not_ want to be exposed to truth serum, and if he had that, who knows what else he could cook up.

"Lucy and I defeated this one together." Erza pointed at the picture of the dark haired wizard. "Midnight. And then Lucy fought Angel alone." A touch on each of the pictures brought up an alert.

"They've both been taken into custody by the Rune Knights." Hibiki reported. Gray stepped up next and tapped on the picture of the long nosed, mohawk bearing wizard.

"We took out Racer, and he's been arrested too."

"My opponent proclaimed himself to be Hoteye." Jura said from where he lay.

"The mooks we talked to said they saw Brain shoot down the Christina. He didn't have anyone with him."

"That means only he and Cobra remain as potential custodians for the girls. Unless they left them without a guard from the main guild, which is also a possibility considering how stretched thin they are." Erza remarked, folding her arms.

Lucy shifted her weight slightly, trying to not let a sigh of weariness escape her. Two fights down and they still hadn't gotten any closer to rescuing Fae...They didn't even know where she was!

She heard a faint jingle from her hip and her mind jumped.

 _Loke!_

Her hand flew down to her hip and touched his key, seeking the connection that their contract and friendship had forged between them.

" _Loke, can you hear me?"_

" _Loud and clear, princess."_

The familiar sound of her strongest spirit mad her shoulders relax. But she was doing this for a reason...

" _We're trying to figure out who has Fae right now. Have you come across any members of the Oracion Seis?"_

" _Just one. The guy with the snake. He said that Jellal had taken her and another girl and escaped from their custody. Orion doesn't smell blood, or pain in their trail."_ Lucy's eyes widened and she was suddenly very glad that only she could hear this update. Erza had been grieving for her childhood...friend (yeah, she was going to go with that) ever since he had regained control of himself and sacrificed himself for their sake to redirect the destabilizing magical energy of the etherion away from them. But he was apparently alive...somehow.

 _So if Jellal got away with them both, then they're probably safe. He was a Ten Wizard Saint, I don't think there's very much that could go up against him._

" _Then he has both Fae and Wendy then. What about the Oracion Seis member?"_

" _Natsu and Happy took care of him."_

"Loke says that Natsu defeated Cobra." Lucy reported, still holding onto her keys. "He's out of the picture."

"There was no one in Fairy Tail's group named Loke." Lyon said, eyes narrowed.

"Loke is also known as Leo, a Golden Zodiac Spirit contracted to Lucy. He came here once he heard Fae had been kidnapped." Erza cut across Lyon firmly in a tone that brooked no argument. "He and a volunteer Silver Spirit have been tracking Fae the entire time. Lucy, any more news?"

"Fae and Wendy have escaped with another prisoner of the Oracion Seis. They haven't been hurt." The relief that swept through the gathered wizards was palpable. For one, Gray stopped emitting chilly mist and Erza's tension moved from razor taut with worry to strong with purpose. But Carla's relief was such that she simply sagged with a deep exhale.

"Lucy, I know you're low on magic, but can you help me track Loke's location?" Hibiki inquired. "I can use Archive to connect to you, and your connection with your spirits will allow us to find Loke and send back up. Everyone else can split up and look for Brain."

"Everyone who can fight should go in groups of at least three." Erza ordered. "Brain is the master for a reason, and we've backed him into a figurative corner by defeating the rest of his guild. He will be even more dangerous than before and we've all seen what he is capable of." The wreckage of the Christina made a solemn backdrop for her words.

Before Lucy stepped up beside Hibiki to plug into Archive, she caught Erza's wrist and whispered to her as quietly as she could.

"The other prisoner is Jellal..."

The Requip Mage's face went white.

Only Fairy Tail believed Jellal was innocent because of Fae vouching for him. If any of the other guilds found him first, they would react with hostility, potentially putting Fae and Wendy in danger. That, and they were currently in an area that was occupied by at least three squads of Rune Knights who all knew what he looked like and had orders to capture him if they could or do their best to kill him if they couldn't.

Erza regained control of her expression and nodded once. Conveying both that she understood the significance of what Lucy had told her, and that her feelings wouldn't hinder her. They had a new worry now. If Jellal had Fae with him, she wouldn't let any attempt on his life pass without protest. It would turn into a much bigger fight very quickly given Fae's resourcefulness and potentially lead to even more trouble.

"Tell Gray." Lucy whispered softly. "If we're going to save him, we need to be there as well as Fae to provide witnesses and evidence for him being possessed for the past ten years. The Knights won't listen to her if she's by herself. They'll just claim it as bias from him rescuing her." Without the two infiltrators who had fooled the Magic Council, there was a lot of turmoil and looking for someone to blame. Fairy Tail had escaped being the scapegoat, and their influence had protected the former subordinate mages. But without some kind of major intervention, Jellal would be crucified for the sake of restoring faith in the Magic Council if he were captured. Whether he was innocent or not.

It would be hard to prove Jellal's innocence, and even more challenging to have it be respected. This kind of battle was not one that Fairy Tail normally got involved in. But Lucy was determined to do whatever she could to save the man Erza loved. Oh, yes, the red haired wizard hadn't said anything. But she didn't need to for Lucy to tell how she felt about Jellal.

Yes, Fae could present evidence simply by showing what had occurred to anyone she wanted to. But not every human would be as reasonable as the Celestial Spirit King when it came to giving pardon for perceived crimes.

-vVv-

When I passed on the information that Zero was awake and active, Jellal ground his teeth. I'm pretty sure this was his alternative to cussing a blue streak. Very tasteful, that.

"Then we have even less time than I feared. Faerun, with your magic active and unhindered, could you find Nirvana?" I pushed my magic in that direction, trying to feel out how hard it would be to track the thing down. It was technically a secret, so there was a pretty good layer concealing its location, but it was also really important that I find it and there were two people that I had been in contact with who knew where it was.

"I'd need a couple minutes to track it down alone." Jellal knelt, offering me a hand.

"I know roughly where it is. I can give you that, and a spell to destroy it without activating it. If you and Wendy go and do this, I can stay and stall Zero. He'll come for me, and it would be safer for the both of you if you weren't here when that happens." I glanced at Wendy then, who was looking more than a little pale and shaky.

 _ **Her magic reserves are at 15% capacity.**_

Yeah, that would make travelling a little hard...Unless...

"You're a Dragon Slayer. Can you regain energy by eating your element? I could carry you, but it'd be better if you could defend yourself." She flushed faintly.

"I...can, yeah. But, because I'm a Sky Dragon Slayer, I can only eat air if it's pure. Really pure, like something that has never gotten touched by human pollution. It's...pretty hard to come by." I shrugged.

"If I fly you up, could you eat enough to recover your energy in less than...How long will it take you to make that spell?" I shifted my attention quickly to Jellal.

"A few minutes."

"Yeah, that." I looked at the other girl expectantly and saw her shrink in on herself.

 _ **She's afraid of heights.**_

I tried to be sensitive and considerate about the information I got from my magic. But this? This was...ridiculous.

"You're a Sky Dragon Slayer and you're afraid of heights?" I asked slowly.

"I can't help it! I got stuck on a cliff face when I was little and Carla was too small to fly me down then! I was up there for hours, and then a storm came and I almost slipped-" An amber rune floated in front of her mouth, momentarily halting her speech.

I sensed both fear and shame in her words, and posture as she admitted the fear. It was probably something she felt the same as me. That it was a very ironic and frustrating fear to have for someone who by nature was supposed to be at home in the open air.

"Alright, we'll handle the phobia later. For now: We need something wind, or air based, that's very pure to get you back on your feet." _What do I have...?_

My mind flicked through every reference I had to wind, air, sky...

 _Airbending? That's just manipulating what's there. Ooh, the Wind Waker could be useful, or maybe the Gust Bellows from the Lanayru factory... Rasen-shuriken? No, too big for me to make, and probably too much for her to eat all at once._

 _-all at once._

The stone trees that surrounded us.

The idea came to me and I plopped down and started scribbling on the root of the tree we were sheltering under. Jellal's hands were glowing as he held them together, occasionally shifting his fingers and the concentration of his magical energy.

"What are you doing?" Wendy asked, watching as I traced runes first with my finger, and then cut them into the fossilized tree with my finger and a Cutting Charm. Since I didn't have my slate, or writing utensils, I had to improvise.

"This forest is so old, it's fossilized and turned to stone. That means they spent years and years just sitting here, doing nothing but remove impurities from the air. And in any forest, all the roots are always interconnected, meaning that to affect the entire forest, you just need to start with one tree." _Purify air, condense to immediate vicinity, link to the whole forest, let them power the range of the spell, go back...332 years is when the fossilization was complete, so they stopped producing clean air then..._

"What?" With most of my mind on figuring out how to make my idea work, I wasn't making a lot of sense.

"Let me finish thinking this through!"

I looked at what I had scored into the tree bark, gnawing my lip as I tried to go over every nuance and phrase mentally before I tried to activate it.

I didn't have my slate to help me run a simulation, but I could tentatively reach out for the end goal of what I had created here...

I saw a rush of heady, forest scented air filling our small cave, and then concentrating to painful levels. The smell was so strong that it knocked Wendy out cold and gave Jellal and I both a headache.

 _Oh, of course! Filter out micro-scents from the forest gathered during that time._ I added the clause to the rune work and tied it in before trying my test again. Then I hastily added a fire retardant rune outlay. This was reactivating the oxygen these trees had produced over the course of centuries. Even altering the percentages of the air mixture a little increased the overall likelihood of a fire starting on accident.

 _And while that could be useful sometime down the road, not what we need right now!_

I ran it about five times, making minor adjustments when needed, and even removing one whole line of text from the original thought. If I was reading the possibility correctly, it should work...Maybe. It only got so far as bringing the air here, I had no control over what Wendy would do afterward, so I couldn't see what would happen to her.

"I think I've got something." I told her, reordering my rune work so that it ran in a linear fashion. I didn't want it to work more than once, so I didn't need to link it into a circle, or figure eight. "When I activate it, it'll take the tree's natural ability to purify air and mimic it. Basically, I'm rewriting the forest's story so that its still been producing clean air for all these centuries. I've limited to the forest, so the air in the immediate area will get processed several times and it ought to be clean enough for you to get down without getting sick. But you have to be ready to grab it when it gets here, it'll disperse very quickly. Ok?" My hasty design had taken about five minutes of precious time, and I quickly glanced through my mental map of the area, now free and unhindered by both the suppressor and G2's lack of concern for her surroundings. I didn't see Zero anywhere close by, but that could change real quick.

"Yeah. Have you done something like this before?"

 _Fly by the seat of my pants and hope I don't crash, burn, explode, melt, vaporize, etc?_

"Yeah." I'd apologize to Wendy later for misleading her. But we had to go now.

Jellal gave me a look that I daresay was amused. His expressions were uncannily like Mystogan's and his body language mirrored him too, which was odd. They were physically identical, but otherwise fundamentally different people. So how could they still share so many similar traits?

 _Questions about Edolas vs Earthland mirrors: Saved and filed under 'Not now.'_

I read my work aloud, infusing it with magic and felt as it took.

The air shivered, the trees around me groaned slightly...

I could only describe it as every tree in the forest exhaling at once. A long, deep, content sigh that drifted through the air and curled around us. My nose wasn't strong enough to identify many smells, and I was filtering out most of it for Wendy's sake. But the young Sky Dragon Slayer sniffed cautiously...then opened her mouth and inhaled.

I didn't see the air go into her mouth, but I could feel as the pressure changed.

Watching Natsu eat fire, of Gajeel some metal, wasn't like this. I could feel the decrease of heat when Natsu ate, and see the chunks of metal that vanished down Gajeel's throat. But in Wendy's case, I felt my ears pop. The air she was drawing in was literally being consumed, vanishing into her body as her magic converted it to energy.

She seemed to inhale forever, but when she stopped...

 _ **Her magic reserves are at 55% capacity.**_

 _Yay! Success!_

"How do you feel?" I asked. She took a few more deep breaths, and I felt her suck down the last bits of clean air the trees had surrendered to my spell.

"Better." She looked better too. There was color in her face now, and she seemed a bit steadier. "I think I'm good to go."

"So is this." Jellal told me, touching his finger tips to mine and-

I was used to having information just appear into my head, but this was literally like being plugged in and being messaged a file in an instant.

"Is that Archive magic?"

"It's an Archive spell useful for communicating information. It doesn't save it anywhere and the recipient can only access it once." I carefully didn't touch the times Jellal had used this spell in the past. It revolved around the Tower of Heaven and how he had kept it hidden for so long.

I reached into my mind and pressed on the new piece of knowledge I had there. I felt the power attached to it, packaged up and tied neatly. I could release the catch now, but that would leave me holding a maelstrom of carefully structured magical energy with no where to put it. So I left it alone.

 _ **Zero is coming.**_

I relayed this to Jellal and he sprang into action.

"Fae, you and Wendy need to go find one of the Light Guilds, and take them with you to destroy Nirvana. You're both brave and capable wizards, but this is not something girls your age can do alone. Between the two of you, I don't doubt you'll be able to find some help. Now get going, quickly."

-vVv-

Jellal hurried the two girls on their way. They had to get out of here and far away before Zero closed in. His hands left sigils on the backs of their clothing, hiding them from being followed by Zero should Jellal fall to him.

A lot of his magic power had been placed into the key he had given to Faerun in order to destroy Nirvana. And while Zero wasn't fresh either, he had absolutely no compunctions about burning through his energy if it meant his goals were accomplished. This would be a fight for his life, and it wasn't one Jellal had high hopes of surviving.

The most he could do right now was ensure that Nirvana was destroyed, removing it as a possible tool of the Balam Alliance, and make it so he didn't rob two more children of their innocence by having them witness his death.

-vVv-

I was focusing on locating Nirvana while Wendy guided us through the trees. We were moving hand in hand to stay together more easily and so I could work my magic on her history of the area to find our final destination. She picked up a scent that she recognized as an ally and started leading us towards them.

Holding Wendy's hand let me benefit from her experience in these forests, so I was delving through her memories of travelling through these woods throughout her childhood. I was searching for some area that set off her instincts as unusual. Dragon Slayers typically had a very precise sense of what was dangerous. Most of the ones I knew typically thought this meant something was interesting or worth fighting. But Wendy was different, she was...pretty much normal. If she thought something was dangerous, she'd stay away from it.

There were a few landmarks that Wendy had spent some time around, but none really stood out.

 _Ok...Wendy grew up in her guild, and we're here at their request._

"Wendy, was there ever a place where your guild master told you not to go?" Wendy would have listened to him, so...

"Yes! The head of Niro spring."

Focusing on the history of the area...

 _ **The magical device Nirvana is the size of a large city and capable of mobility. It's entrance is located behind Niro Spring, where it's sealing and burial rerouted a natural source of water to the surface.**_

 _Bingo!_

Wendy's hand tightened in mine as the wind shifted to blow in our faces..

"I smell someone, but they're not human!"

There came a triumphant bay from behind us. It didn't sound like anyone I knew, but-

"FAE!" -I knew that voice.

Hope and happiness blended with sweet relief in a cocktail of emotions that made me feel like I could fly au natural. My hand tore out of Wendy's as I reversed my direction as fast as I could manage, throwing myself back the way we had come.

"Loke!"

We both were running for each other, so when we collided, it hurt a little on impact. But I didn't care. Because for the first time since I had been shoved into a sack a full day earlier...

"You're safe now."


	26. Arise

_I found her. She's safe._

Her steps faltered and Lucy's shoulders slumped with relief, a huge weight having fallen from her at Loke's report.

 _Any sign of Wendy?_

 _She's here too._

Lucy turned to Erza with a smile. She didn't even need to speak.

"Loke found them."

"Yes."

She could visibly see Titania's emotional armor relax. Gray's jaw loosened as well. The worried white cat's fur smoothed for the first time in several hours.

"Wendy is alright?"

"They both are."

They had parted ways from the other guild wizards to hunt down Brain. The three of them were the most put together and well rested, and knew how to fight in unison. They had the best chance of defeating Brain when they found him. Lyon had remained with the wreckage of the Christina to guard the wounded and protect Hibiki, who had his Archive open and was monitoring their position to send the Rune Knights their way once they gave the signal.

 _Lucy: we've got more problems._ Loke's hard tone made his summoner tense.

"Wait. We're not done yet." Her words caught Erza in the midst of delivering a report to Hibiki and the rest of their allies that the hostages were safe.

 _Fae says that Brain has an alter ego, a double personality called Zero. And the Brain side is the nice one. Jellal gave Fae and Wendy a fully formed spell to destroy Nirvana, and then sent them to go find help before trying to destroy it. He's either fighting Zero now, or will be soon. He'll need some support._

Loke went quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded alarmed.

 _Jellal has already engaged Zero and Fae says it doesn't look good._

 _We need a location then, now!_

Lucy spoke as Loke relayed information from Wendy.

"Zero is fighting our ally in the Stone Forest. Fae, Wendy and Loke will head for Nirvana at the head of Niro spring." Lucy grabbed another key off her belt. _Pyxis can point me in the right direction now that I have an actual location for him to focus on!_

"Erza and I will head for where Zero is then." Gray said, nodding shortly, glancing down at the cat who was looking focused as her Aera magic bloomed white feathered wings on her back.

"I can guide you to the Stone Forest, but if the enemy is already there, you will need to run to make sure you reach your ally in time."

Lucy reflexively checked her magic reserves, somewhat recovered from her fight with Angel. She would be able to keep Pyxis out for as long as she might need him, but she could only hope they didn't run into a fight. Of all her Golden Spirits, only Cancer hadn't fought yet that day.

 _Loke will be there and we'll make it work._ She gritted her teeth, holding out the arrow headed silver key.

"Open, Gate of the Compass: Pyxis!"

-vVv-

My reunion with Loke was soured somewhat by the realization my magic delivered to me.

 _ **Jellal is losing to Zero. He doesn't expect to win.**_

And when you were fighting against an opponent off Zero's caliber and morality, that was the same as saying Jellal was expecting to die, nobly sacrificing himself to buy time for us to destroy Nirvana.

"Fae, look at me." Loke said, gripping my shoulders firmly. "Erza and Gray are going to help Jellal now. He'll be fine. But as long as Nirvana is still around, it's still a threat and something Zero can use. Focus on the mission."

 _Focus on the mission._

I closed my eyes briefly, rewriting my mind to have our intended goal as the primary focus and leaving out everything else.

 _Goal: Neutralize Nirvana as a weapon._

My magic said the next course of action, now that this was decided, was to keep moving in order to use the key Jellal had given me.

So we did. With Wendy guiding us, the three of us continued onward through the forest.

 _ **Dark guild wizards are scattered around the area and are waiting in ambush in several locations.**_

The update made me stop where I was, my hand was still linked with Wendy to keep us oriented. Loke paused and gave me a sharp look.

" _Ambush ahead."_ I mouthed at him, thinking hard.

We hadn't been making a lot of noise, so I didn't think that they had realized we were approaching. The shadows of the forest were thick here, thicker than they should be.

 _ **Darkness Magic: Veil.**_

Any kind of invisibility or concealment magic had a poignant disadvantage. If you were trying to make yourself unseen, you were also compromising your ability to see.

I scanned using my magic and eventually held up one hand, giving a hand sign for 'eight'. There were eight enemy wizards manning this ambush site. I could see their positions laid out in my mind's eye.

I took stock of our odds in the blink of an eye.

Wendy was sitting at about half power, and would be a powerful ally in any kind of fight. Loke was basically combat ready. He'd fought Cobra, but without any good openings he hadn't launched any big attacks, so he hadn't used much energy. I was hovering around a little more than half power myself from collecting pure air for Wendy, plus drawing on my magic's passive abilities to use Wendy's experience to keep us oriented and on track.

 _We can take 'em._ I thought, steel entering my spine. I knew Loke would be ready for a fight, but I still glanced at Wendy. The real question was if she would be ok with this. I could tell that combat hadn't been part of her wizarding career thus far. She had earned money as a healer and by collecting natural resources to sell to crafters. Fighting was not something she did. Not like Fairy Tail.

Loke and I would be fine, but we were a team right now, and I wanted to be sure that she would be alright with us going and picking a fight with these wizards.

Fear and uncertainty flashed in her eyes and she shrunk back. It was literally just a change in the stance of her shoulders, but I could see what she meant by it. She wasn't ready to fight. Not yet..

"It's ok." I smiled reassuringly at her. I let go of her hand and moved forward to stand behind Loke, but off to the side to have a clear view of what was going to become our battlefield. My heart was pounding, my hands were raised and I had spells on my lips.

This probably wouldn't be the last fight we had to get to Niro spring. There were at least two other groups. We could go around them, but it would be faster just to power straight through. It wasn't certain that we would fight them all, but if we took one out, it would cause enough of a disturbance that their allies would close in.

Loke caught my eye and blinked. I quickly lifted my hands to my eyes and saw Wendy hastily copy me.

" _Regulus Flare_!" Even behind my sealed lids, I saw the blazing light that burst from Loke's body, burning away the concealing darkness magic and startling the wizards that had been waiting behind it.

Keeping the positions of two wizards in my minds eye, I fired off two basic Stunning spells, monitoring as Loke rushed to close in on another pair of startled wizards.

One spell landed and knocked my target unconscious. The other clipped his shoulder and while it threw him back, didn't take him out.

Loke was doing his best to occupy as many of the wizards as he could, and he was doing so with four of them. The remaining three managed to clear their vision and charge right for us.

I grabbed Wendy's shoulder and shoved her aside.

" _Aguamenti!"_ A powerful jet of water shot from my hand like a fire hose, catching all three of the men as I swept my hand in a wide arc. They staggered. " _Glacius!"_ The water dripping from them froze all their clothing to their skin, causing two of them to groan and the last one to use words that children should not hear! Were I not pressed for time, I'd have taken the time to gag him. I may have had no innocence left because of my magic, but Wendy was still pure!

I sensed the angry one gather energy for a spell.

" _Protego!"_ It was a strong, basic shield, and the Force Bolt of dark energy ricochet off of it. It hummed past the wizards and I had an idea. I changed the angle of my shield just so and..

"Is that the best you can do?" I taunted the already annoyed wizard. He snarled angrily and sent another stronger Force Bolt at me.

This time, the ricochet hit him into one of his friends. I took my chance gleefully.

" _Epoximise!"_ The two wizards struggled to rise again, but they were seemingly glued together. Which they actually were thanks to my Sticking Charm. They made a comical enough sight that I had to giggle even as I turned my attention to the last remaining enemy, who was still trying to crack the ice on his shirt enough to move his arms. Feeling maybe a little reckless, I charged him, my fist coming to a ready position by my hip as I said the words to enhance my blow.

" _Falcon... PUNCH!"_

There may have been some fire trailing from my fist when it made an impact in the man's middle. And I may have needed to expend a little more magic than normal to keep the disproportionate impact of the iconic finishing move's recoil from breaking my arm.

But when the man made a very satisfying thud against a nearby tree, I flashed a grin.

 _I am not, and never will be as battle crazy as Natsu, Gajeel or Erza...but that felt really good._

It still didn't make up for being kidnapped again. But it did...help a little.

"Nice hit, Fae!" Loke said, grinning as he brushed some bark off his jacket sleeve. "Come on girls, we've got a big deadly weapon of mass destruction to unmake!"

I trotted on ahead, alert for the next ambush with a wide smile on my face. Loke was circling us protectively, senses honed on our surroundings. I was not so absorbed in my scanning that I missed when Wendy spoke in a very soft voice.

"I'm sorry..."

I blinked at her.

"What for?"

"I...I didn't do anything."

"Exactly. What are you apologizing for? I don't care that you didn't fight, Wendy. If you don't want to, I won't make you. And I'll do everything I can to make sure that it's your choice if you decide to."

The next ambush we came across was less of an ambush bust and more of a curbstomp.

" _Sky Dragon Roar!"_ The cyclone of deadly air swept the half dozen men off their feet. Loke supplemented the whirlwind with his own Twister Magic and let me pick them off while they were suspended in midair. (Bisca would be proud of my finger-pistols. And my aim.)

But it was the smile and resolve in Wendy's stance that made me bounce along, even in the dire circumstances we were in.

"How much further, girls?" Loke asked, flexing his wrists and checking.

"Not very far. We're maybe another ten minutes away." Wendy said confidently.

"Alright. Fae, anything about how things are going for our friends?"

I closed my eyes, and scanned for any new updates on how the fight was faring-

There came an abrupt tug behind my eyes as a tracking spell abruptly disconnected.

 _ **Zero was tracking your location and letting you lead him to Nirvana.**_

 _...Damn it. I knew he was smarter than Brain, but-_

I had read what kind of damage Nirvana could do when piloted properly and not just set loose at random. In the hands of a man like Zero, I literally saw Fiore and the neighboring countries tearing themselves to pieces as Zero used the magic of Reversal to turn all the Light Guilds into his personal army. Brain had intended the same thing, but he was intent on stopping at the borders of Fiore.

Zero meant to conquer the continent and beyond, turning the world into a massive dictatorship, with wizards under his banner being first class citizens and everyone else being serfs at best.

And I almost led him right to it.

 _Aw hell no!_

But he knew I would have used the connection to fight him, so he had withdrawn quickly when he noticed my magic looking inside.

"I think you two are going to have to go on without me." I said, lips drawn into a hard line. "I'm...compromised."

Loke's brow furrowed.

"Fae...?"

"What do you mean?" They both looked so concerned and the fact that there were people who genuinely cared about me was shocking in a very good, but sad way to G2, who was still a ghost in the back of my head. I shook myself. She wanted to cry in relief, but I was not going to cry yet. The fight wasn't over!

"The full explanation will have to wait. It's enough to say that Zero can track me wherever I go. He'll be able to tell when we reach Nirvana, then he'll teleport right to us and then we'll all be dead."

"Fae, no." Loke already knew what I was thinking and was not happy with it. I grinned in spite of myself.

"Fae, yes." _Loke's a Celestial Spirit, he can't hold human magic, so..._ I reached into my own history, specifically for the spell Jellal had used to transfer the key to my mind. I placed my hands at Wendy's temples. "This may tickle a bit."

I...well, the function of what I did was cut the spell Jellal had given to me from my head and paste it into Wendy's. As soon as I had done so, the power to use the destruction key was gone and I was only left with the knowledge my magic had copied from it. If I wasn't ripping off Jellal's spell, I wouldn't have been able to manage it without throwing her thoughts and previous knowledge into chaos, but as it was, I felt the key settle firmly into her mind.

And as I was touching her and thinking of Nirvana, and the land...

 _ **The tribe of the Nirvit's are the founders of Cait Shelter and the creators of Nirvana.**_

It brought a certain poetic justice that a member of Cait Shelter would be the one to end this threat.

"What was that?" Wendy asked, blinking and rubbing her forehead.

"That was Fae pulling a Natsu." Loke grumbled.

"I am not!" I objected. "If I were doing a Natsu, or Erza, then I would just try to smash everything in the area until I hit Nirvana and then destroy it. This is considerably more thought out. If anything, I'm pulling a Lucy."

"You're right, it's thinking ahead and planning like Lucy, but being a self sacrificing idiot like Gray!" I had greeted Gray upon his return from Galuna Island with righteous indignation for thinking that killing himself was a worthwhile price for killing Deliora. The entire guild knew about it within fifteen minutes of my reading it, and doing something noble, but stupid with the end result of self harm was now called 'Pulling a Gray.'

"I will gladly point out all the ways you are not correct about that after Nirvana is destroyed. Wendy, you now have the key and everything you need to find Nirvana and stop it from ever being used again. I can't keep going with you, otherwise I'll just draw Zero right to us. You and Loke will have to go on without me." I stepped back, humming a few bars of 'You Can Fly' to pop my wings out. I had to get as far away from this location as possible to throw Zero off if he tried to come after me once he checked the spell again.

"Fae." I paused, Loke having grabbed my ankle before I flew out of reach. His eyes were extremely grave behind his tinted glasses. "Be careful."

 _ **He's seen too many children die in his lifetime and he does not you to be one of them. Especially not after the effort you put into saving his life.**_

He didn't try to talk me out of it. He didn't try to make me stay. He just asked that I not die. I dropped down to his height and hugged Loke tightly.

 _I can do that._

"You're explaining to Erza why you ran off." He muttered.

"You have to deal with Lucy..."

Loke snorted. "Still better than Erza."

 _Yeah, can't deny that..._

I pulled back and rocketed skyward, searching my mental map to find where Zero was and then fly in the opposite direction of Nirvana.

 _ **Natsu has joined the battle between Jellal and Zero.**_

 _Well that's good to know!_

The orange glow and goats of flame let me keep track of exactly where they were. It was really easy to avoid.

And so, I just flew. After a few minutes, I sensed Zero track the lacrima again, it felt like something was tugging on the strings in my brain and it made a dull ache throb in the center of my forehead.

The forest beneath me surged with darkness and blackness.

 _ **Zero realized you're onto him and are taking steps to throw him off the trail.**_

Satisfaction budded in me and I happily turned a loop in midair.

All I had to do to screw up his plan, was fly in circles.

 _ **Loke and Wendy have reached Nirvana.**_

 _Yay! Good news for a change!_

 _ **Wendy has set to destroying Nirvana.**_

This news came with a timer with about six minutes on it. That was how long it would take Wendy to use the key to destroy the ancient weapon.

 _Come on Natsu...Jellal...! Keep him busy for six more minutes, and we'll be home free._ Comparatively speaking at least. Zero was still a monumental threat, but the damage he could do would be reduced from several countries to maybe the whole county. _Just a few minutes more...just a little more, please...!_

-vVv-

Jellal was exhausted.

He'd never felt this way before. Growing up as the Tyrant of the Tower of Heaven, there had never been a need for him to expend so much energy. The one chance he had to experience it was after the tower exploded and he burned through his magic, and most of his available soul, to keep it from killing everyone around him.

Fighting Brain at his worst after the day he had been having was not something he would recommend, or ever want to do again.

In the mere moments of clear thought he had enjoyed before falling into a coma, he had gained an intense respect for Natsu Dragneel's capabilities as a wizard. That respect was only growing as he fought alongside him. From his consideration for his feline partner, to the fluid, rapidly evolving style of fighting that kept Zero from pinning down his specific style, Natsu was a genius of combat.

When Zero threw him back, trying to gain some distance to use his long range magic, Natsu would throw fire from his feet and hands to turn himself into a human missile and close again, just as quickly. It was taking all the mental capacity Jellal had to keep track of where Natsu was.

With most of his magic having been consumed, Jellal had fallen back on basic Telepathic and Telekinetic manipulations. He was casting Thought Projections of Natsu around Brain, using telekinesis to make their attacks cause damage. And even that was pushing it.

"You insects...!" Zero seethed, bloodshot eyes rolling in his head. " _Dark Gravity_!"

 _Damn it._ The spell was part of the Darkness school that Jellal had learned from him in his childhood. He channeled Heavenly Body magic to counter it. Stars, planets and all the inhabitants of space were subject primarily to their own laws of gravity after all, and Zero would need to exert much more magic in order to make his area spell affect him.

His ally had no such protection. Natsu slammed into the ground at an awkward angle. The projections continued unhindered.

"There you are!" Zero didn't take the bait, focusing on Natsu. " _Dark Capriccio: Scream!_ "

The bolt flew towards the pinned Dragon Slayer, who with an enormous effort rolled to the side, catching the fringe of the attack on his back instead of head on. With that foiled and Jellal getting closer, Brain focused on his first spell.

" _Dark Gravity, 2nd Shadow!"_ The weight of his body increased as Zero tried to pull Jellal back to the ground with enough force to break bones.

 _Got you._

" _Heavenly Body: Constance!"_ The spell was a direct hit, moving unhindered by gravity. Jellal had taught himself Heavenly Body magic as a precaution against Brain removing him once his usefulness expired. As with any brand of celestial magic, it required a pure magic source, which Brain in his life of death, torture and cruelty no longer possessed. It was something that he guaranteed could not learn counters to ahead of time.

"Damn you, you snivelling brat!" Spit flew from Zero's mouth as he grappled with a living rope of light that wound around him. "I will peel the skin from your bones, tear the mind from your body and dance your skeleton like a puppet!"

The spell _Constance_ was a relatively simple one that forced the victim to maintain the last spell they cast. Zero was now being forced to keep Dark Gravity at the second stage of power. Jellal let himself come to rest on the ground, keeping up his Heavenly Body only long enough to reach Natsu's side, who was still struggling against the first degree of the spell.

 _Zero has finite power, but no moral limit on how far to go. He doesn't care how much damage he does to his body, only that he is successful in destroying us._ They were in a corner. It was only a matter of time before Zero cancelled the Constance spell. Brain would have figured it out within a few minutes and Zero had all the same mental capabilities and then some. And once he worked through it, then Jellal would truly be on the last dregs of his power and facing a still capable opponent.

 _I've seen what has the capability of defeating even a monster like Zero only once before._ The former member of the Magic Council took a deep breath, cancelling the Thought Projections still harrying Zero and feeling a modicum of relief as the magic powering them returned to him. _Breath...air, to fuel the fire._

He thought back, back to all his sins, all the wrongs he had committed. Everyone he had hurt...

 _I thought I could absolve myself of my guilty feelings by dying to save others..._

A child's voice, ringing powerfully in his mind.

 _Death is not an apology!_

 _But I still feel guilty for it._

The voice came again.

 _None of it was you._

Those feelings...were valid. But they were misplaced. And they didn't belong. Not when he could use them for a greater gain. If dying wasn't a suitable way to pay for his actions...

 _Then maybe actions will suffice._

Hopefully then he wouldn't die from doing this by overdrawing his magic. That would be ironic.

Golden fire bloomed in Jellal's palm. The Flame of Rebuke danced there, the negative feelings burning away and causing light and uplift as they were cleansed. The sudden lack of magic in his core made Jellal collapse, unable to even remain upright in the face of the amplified gravity that still surrounded them.

"Natsu..." He inched his hand towards the Fire Dragon Slayer. "Take...it..."

 _End this fight. I can't do any more._

 _I'm counting on you._

-vVv-

Zero knew what Jellal was doing.

He was offering fire to the pinned Dragon Slayer. The Fire Dragon Slayer known as Salamander. The Dragon Slayer who had entered Dragon Force and almost single handedly halted the plan to resurrect Zeref the Black Wizard.

Zero was no fool, even when his weaker half was in command. He had no desire to face the closest thing to an angry dragon that there was. But interfering in Jellal's hair-brained, _self-sacrificing_ , **_entirely too EFFECTIVE_** plan was beyond him right then. His power was tangled in the minor curse his former student had subjected him to. Most of his power and concentration was wrapped up in unravelling it, but it wasn't _going_ _**fast**_ _**ENOUGH**_. (Most of it. There were about four other minor parts that were listing all the ways they could extract the blood from Jellal's body, exsanguination was such a _lovely_ way of torturing someone. Another two were **salivating** over the thought of having access to a true Dragon Slayer's corpse. Would that _finally_ be the proper substitute for dragon's blood that the ancient alchemical recipes called for?)

 _Brain._ He growled at his internal prisoner. _Summon your tool._ Brain may have hated Zero for dominating his own body, but he knew the risks of facing a Slayer in the Dragon Force. He had been absorbed in tracking G2.0, but she had apparently gained enough autonomy to part ways from her companions and lead him astray.

The token for the teleportation spell was still resting in his inside pocket. Zero withdrew it for Brain's purposes and felt the inferior intellect inside his mind begin to dissect the runes that lay on it.

Within a few seconds, Brain had worked out how to reverse the spell's function. Instead of teleporting the user to a desired location, it would bring whatever was at a known location to the user. A pulse of magic and the girl was stumbling, amber wings formed from runic script standing on her back.

The dragon slayer gave a startled groan that might have been her human name, but Zero took the command phrase as Brain gave it to him.

"'Quietly you endure, silently you watch, patiently you wait for your master's voice.'" The alarm drained from her face and her shoulders relaxed.

"I am G2.0."

"Undo this spell." He ordered, jerking his chin down at the irritating bother that would soon be but a passing dream. G2.0 moved to obey, not reacting to devastation on the men's faces behind her.

-vVv-

Jellal had never wanted to see G2.0 again. In the short time he had known Fae, he found that he liked her a lot better.

But there was something wrong even now. Something different about the way Fae was moving. Too graceful. And the wings were still out. Any magic associated with Fae out to have been released when the command phrase was issued and she was reset-

G2.0 moved behind Zero, amber runes forming as she worked on the spell Jellal had placed to hinder his magic. Zero was gloating, gravity returned to normal as he released his spell, but Jellal's attention was fastened on the girl, as was Natsu's. Actually, the Dragon Slayer was grinning.

Etherion blue eyes came back into focus and a playful smirk formed. Fae winked at Jellal even as she lifted her hand towards Zero. She lifted herself a few feet off the ground to reach Zero's head and touched it.

" _Petrificus Totalus._ " All of Zero's muscles seized and went rigid, even his jaw. But somehow his eyes still bulged with manic fury as he realized he had been played.

"I know that won't hold you for long." Fae said candidly, drifting around him, hands linked behind her back. "I know that no matter how much I want to, kicking your ass isn't something I'm capable of yet. But I do think you are overdue for a lesson and some comeuppance for what you've done to me." Her hand came to the side, and her face hardened. It wasn't the blankness of G2.0, this was a woman in a girl's body who was fed up with the man in front of her.

Fae turned into a warrior with just that shift in expression and stance. Magic started to dance around her, stirring her short hair and her eyes started to glow a little brighter.

"You've made two major mistakes. First: You assumed that just because you had a hand in my life, and my childhood, that you could come in and take it over just like that." A snap of her fingers, and the writing in the air spiraled together and drifted to the side. "I am a Wizard of Fairy Tail. My name is Celeste D Faerun. And nothing you have done or will do will change that. Second: a little backstory." _What?_

Jellal was mostly helpless on the ground, but he still had enough cognizance and energy to be bewildered. _She's telling a story?_

"Fairies are part of folklore the world over, and beyond. They deliver on their deals, everything you give to them, they will give back with interest. Most renowned of them all is the Fairy Queen, Titania. All fear her wrath, and seek her favor. But she is far from the only Lady of the Sidhe. Among other names that emerge, there is one spoken of with even more fear than the queen." Fae's other hand had joined her writing, letters and words drifting around her and an unnatural light burning in her eyes.

"In some stories, she's a handmaid to Titania. One of her trusted advisors. In others, she is a ruler in her own right, the Queen of Winter, Lady of Air and Darkness. She is the Fairie Midwife, who attends the entrance of new life. She possesses many titles, but only one really matters to you right now." Fae leaned in, all of her runes consolidating around her hand into a perfectly formed magic circle written in the light of her soul. Intricate and detailed, there were a thousand facets, hundreds of words that formed it. All things that Fae could do with this new power she had chosen to channel her magic into.

She placed her hand on Zero's forehead.

"She is the Thief of Dreams, and you will forever rue the day you heard her name. _Unseelie Arts: Mab's Justice!_ "

Jellal saw nothing impressive happen, but the scream Zero let out sounded like a thousand hopes shattering into dust. She could have put him on the rack and he wouldn't have made a sound quite like this.

Fae quickly retreated from the still paralyzed man who was out of breath, but still trying to scream anyway. With his already bloodshot eyes and his face wracked with inexpressible pain, he looked like a thing straight from a nightmare.

"All yours, Natsu." She landed beside them. Jellal belatedly noticed that Natsu had inhaled the golden fire he had been holding and was now rising, a feral grin on his face.

"Thanks, Fae. 'Bout time you discovered your circle." Scales were forming on Natsu's face and his teeth were noticeably sharper. His magical aura was much more potent as well. Fae helped Jellal to his feet, dismissing her wings, and helped him to his feet.

"Agreed, and thanks! But Imma go hide with Jellal now."

Fae floated up a few inches to touch his head and whispered something under her breath. The unfamiliar spell cleared Jellal's mind and let them move away at a much faster pace. Zero still howled all the while, the sound falling off into broken gasps that abruptly turned into grunts of effort as Natsu began to give him battle. Not even whatever Fae had done to him would make Zero an easy opponent. But the tables had turned, and Jellal, from what he could tell, was betting that Natsu had the upper hand now.

"Fae- What exactly did you do with that spell?" She didn't look up at him.

"I'm a Story Mage. I used that spell to...edit some parts of Brain's personal story."

"Like what?" She glanced up at him then, hesitance on her face.

"The one thing he prizes above all else is his knowledge. So I removed it. Or a lot of it, at least. Mostly just the parts relating to me, and how to control me. But my control wasn't perfect, so I got some extra stuff too... Zero is originally a spirit of intellect, so my spell taking a bite out of his mind felt about the same as cutting out his still beating heart."

That...was remarkably ruthless for a child. Even one as smart as Fae.

"So you essentially gave Zero a temporary lobotomy, removing knowledge he has learned over years of time-."

"And making it so he can never relearn it the same way. The one thing he values about himself above everything else is his knowledge. Take that, and his dream of being all knowing is stolen." They stared at each other as a blast of heat from behind them, ruffling hair and delivering the smell of burning wood, cloth and hair.

"...So it's not temporary." _Well, that certainly ups her threat level._ She shook her head, eyes dropping.

"It's basically the same thing he wanted me to do to you. Wendy was there to put your body back together, they had me on hand to rewrite your mind into someone Brain could control, like the rest of the Oracion Seis. Same idea of altering someone's perceived history, but very different intent."

So while Brain had wanted Fae to...judiciously edit his mind's contents, she had taken the concept and turned it into a weapon to pay Brain/Zero back for his crimes against her three fold.

"That's...very brutal."

"There's a reason people get screwed over if they try to mess with fairies." She paused in her step, head tilting. "Oh. Nirvana's gone." She said it almost casually.

"If you're here, then-?" A large flood of released magical energy washed through the tree, bourn on a surprisingly strong wind. "...That isn't supposed to happen."

"Yeah, there were like two minutes left on the timer, then it just went all at once...I gave the spell to Wendy when I realized Zero could track me to it's location. I had her and Loke go on ahead while I threw him off the trail. I guess that's what the addition of her magic to both of ours did to the destruction spell. It added a Wind component-"

"And cutting things apart is something Wind Magic excels at. So when Wendy's magic mixed with ours, and our unified intent of destroying what the spell was aimed at-"

"Heavenly Body providing the power, my Story magic handing her knowledge of internal weaknesses and how best to exploit them-"

"-When she turned it on the main hub, it collapsed faster than she expected and she had some extra magic left. With the original objective achieved, then intent keeping everything focused was suddenly void. The magic had nothing else to do but escape and re-assimilate into the air." Jellal finished the brief diagnosis of the magic. "It occurs to me we may have just discovered a much safer, much easier way of achieving a Unison Raid. Preserve each wizard's contribution with an Archive function and pass it from individual to individual, letting them each contribute... They can measure exactly how much power is needed before handing it on. And so long as each contributor has the same goal in mind, it will work about the same way." Were he still on the magic council, he would have presented that as new research to help build his cover as their ally. Though it would only benefit a fairly small number of people. Wizards with enough skill in Archive who also had sufficient magical power to perform a Unison Raid naturally were in relatively small numbers.

"Huh...Cool." Fae shot him a bright smile, still supporting him. "We're awesome! We helped save the day and discovered a new law of magic!" He couldn't help but laugh at her enthusiasm. Her joy was contagious. He wished it lasted a little longer. Her eyes glazed over briefly and when her attention returned to him, she looked panicked again.

"Um...Kinda weird question but, do you trust me?"

"...Yes?" _What is she talking about?_

"Good. Just follow my lead, keep your voice low and steady, and please, please, please, don't ask to be arrested."


	27. Cait Shelter

I didn't have a lot of magic to throw around, but some Transfiguration coupled with muttering a familiar story made Jellel's outfit shift into something more akin to what Mystogan wore on a day to day basis. Including a mask. I called my wings out to float me up to his height to put it on him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, leaning away reflexively in surprise.

"Taking advantage of the fact that Mystogan's always been super careful about showing his face."

 _How long until they can hear us...?_

 _ **Two minutes and 12 seconds.**_

 _Ok, a little more time for costume adjustments and explanations._

I stepped back, scanning Jellal head to toe.

"Shift your stance a little. Mystogan trades on being unnoticed, yet mysterious and confident. So, relaxed, neutral shoulders, but head held high."

"Faerun, what are you talking about?" I met Jellal's gaze with what I hoped came across as something firm and confident.

"You are physically identical in every way to a member of Fairy Tail, Mystogan, one of the S-class mages. He's also my teacher, so him being here to rescue me from being kidnapped is not implausible. So we're going to pretend that you're Mystogan for the Rune Knights, and then you won't get arrested for everything you did while possessed!" I saw it as a very positive indicator of Jellal's new/old morality when he looked horrified at the idea. "It's not ideal, I know, but-"

"You're suggesting that we lie in the face of authority, and that I steal the identity of one of your guildmates?"

"Borrow! borrow his identity. I'll apologize to him later." He pulled the mask to the side.

"No, I won't-" I smacked my fist into the side of his head in. In certainly got his attention. I put as much pleading into my gaze as I could.

"Please, Jellal. You've already lost almost ten years to the man who possessed you. Don't let him take anymore of your life by getting yourself put in jail. That's exactly why he released the possession spell! So you would take the fall for his actions!"

"Faerun, if they see through this, you and all of Fairy Tail will suffer for trying to hide me!" Jellal argued, in a lower voice. "I've already done enough to you and your family-"

"It wasn't you! How many times will I need to say that...!?"

 _Hey, how far away they?_

 _ **47 seconds until they are within earshot.**_

I had to get this self sacrificing, ridiculously law abiding idiot to let me lie in the face of authority to quite possibly save his life.

 _ **The heavenly bodies all move according to precise laws. Jellal needs to overcome an integral part of his nature in order to accept any kind of deception or subversion of the law.**_

 _Makes sense, but not helpful right now!_

I grabbed Jellal's face, outright begging now.

"Please, don't go back to jail...Erza knows you didn't want to hurt her. None of your friends do now that they know the truth! Please, Jellal, just-"

A man who barely remembered anything, snatched me and ran me away from my kidnappers. Protected me. Would have laid down his life for me without even knowing me. Who had jumped into this fight with no reservation. Who had given both blood, magic and very nearly his life, to stop Brain and Zero while protecting others.

 _Jellal Fernandes is not someone who deserves prison._

He would be torn apart, targeted on all sides because of crimes laid to his name.

He wasn't broken by his possession, but jail would destroy parts of him that he could never get back. If he was punished, then he wouldn't ever be able to view himself as a good man ever again. Just an endless cycle of finding something new to atone for.

 _You don't deserve that_

"-just let me protect you." I finished quietly, a wave of exhaustion that had nothing, or very little, to do with how I had been using my magic, washing over me. I let my wings fade and landed on the ground again, swaying dizzily on my feet. I hadn't eaten or drunk anything for about 24 hours, so once my adrenaline ran out, I would need some significant time to recover.

Gentle hands grabbed my shoulders and steadied me.

"Fae?" I looked up at the kind, worried face, so much like Mystogan's it was unnerving. He even had the same worried face...

 _Face._

I reached up and tugged his mask back into place. My hand rested on the side of his head.

 _Please show him..._

 _Mystogan._

Everything that I felt, and knew about the man was passing through my head and into his.

His unparalleled skills in the use of magic staves, his kindness and compassion. The lessons he had taught me, the doors he had opened. My friend. My teacher.

 _This is Mystogan._

 _Jellal._

Jellal's talent for magic was prodigal. His compassion had survived years of possession from an evil man who was so far removed from immediate implication that I couldn't find his name or identity looking through his history. He was a good man, and had done so much for me all without really knowing me...So how much more of a friend could he be?

 _This is you. Please don't go...I don't know you that well, but I do know I don't want to lose you._

I felt him sigh and a tangible barrier gave way.

 _ **He will do it.**_

He picked me up again, though I knew he must be even more tired than I was.

"Alright Fae...Alright."

"Who goes there?" A challenge came.

"Hopefully a friend." Jellal called back, not having the right inflections to be Mystogan, but...close enough. I relaxed into his hold, trying to scrape together more magic in case I needed to do something to help complete the act.

The white cloaked men advanced, and one man with a captain's knot on his shoulder held up his fist.

"Identify yourself!" He ordered sharply.

"Mystogan of Fairy Tail." Jellal replied, voice perfectly steady even as his legs trembled with the effort of holding us both upright. "Is there a medic in your squad? I think Fae has strained her magical core over the day she's had."

"You need one even more than I do..."

The medic came and examined me, giving me a small bottle of distilled ether to drink to regain my magic. At my age, completely emptying myself would be the same as burning out a portion of my capacity to use magic, so keeping my reserves high was critical. Adults got more concentrated doses.

Jellal was questioned, but I stayed close to him and between the two of us, we got a feasible story as to what had happened.

'Mystogan' had used a Wind Walker staff to reach the area, and had discerned my location. He had managed to free me and Wendy and we escaped. He gave over several of his magic staves to power a 4 Tier Dismantling Vortex to destroy Nirvana before it could be resurrected, and then had sent Wendy and I to safety while he stayed to hold off Zero. But I had been reckless, and given all the staves to Wendy and Loke and gone back to try and help. By that point, Natsu had arrived on scene. Mystogan had sacrificed his last staff to give Natsu enough magical fire to enter Dragon Force and defeat Zero, then he had taken me and fled to look for help.

"Destroying your staves like that was an extremely reckless thing to do." The doctor said sternly as he examined Jellal's core on a lacrima monitor. "You're lucky you didn't end up draining yourself completely..." Which wasn't an issue for the real Mystogan, but neither here nor there.

 _ **They're checking the guild registry.**_

"We're going to need to verify your identity without the mask." I hid my flinch at the words by drawing away from the needle approaching my arm. They were giving me extra fluids through an IV. The attendant said something soothing that I barely paid attention to as I focused on Jellal a short distance away. I saw one of the knights had a slate of lacrima with a picture on it...

 _I think it has the right picture, but please, please...!_

"-just be a little pinch." I winced as the needle slid into my arm and the cool fluid started trickling into me. "Very good." The medic assistant slid off his cloak and slung it around me. "You'll be feeling a bit colder because of the difference in temperature, but it'll pass quickly."

I couldn't decide if the knight's were genuinely suspicious of Jellal's story, or if my nerves was just making it seem like that. But they seemed to be keeping a pretty close eye on Jellal and were asking him a lot of questions...

 _ **Erza and Gray are here.**_

My head snapped to the side, heart lifting and smile crossing my face.

There was the same red hair, and the same-

 _Gray lost his shirt again._ Seeing the pair of wizards made my heart lift in joy and satisfaction. It really was over, and now they were here, and I didn't have to handle this alone!

"Erza! Gray!" My arm was tugged by the needle still in me as I tried to wave to them. But calling them was enough to get their attention. Both of them abruptly turned aside from the Rune Knight they had been talking to and made a beeline for me.

Their magic, as familiar as my own, wrapped around me as Erza picked me up in a tight hug.

"Thank goodness you're alright..." She breathed. I hugged her back.

"Mystogan took good care of me." Her breath caught faintly at the name of the wizard she knew for a fact wasn't here. And she also saw Jellal sitting a short distance away, subtle surrounded by four different Rune Knights. There was no way she wouldn't recognize him, or confuse him with the real Mystogan.

"He always does." There was a slight shift in her tone that would let anyone who knew her now that she was hiding something. But she covered it up with an imperious voice. Her command tone, the voice she used when she was warming up to barking orders, then raising hell if she wasn't obeyed yesterday.

"Is there a problem here, sir?" The captain straightened slightly and saluted.

"Standard verification of identity, ma'am."

"No one can lie to Fae, Captain." Erza said firmly. "If she says he's her teacher, then he is. No one in the guild knows him better than she does. But I will provide verification as one of the senior mages of Fairy Tail and as the certified emergency stand in for Master Makarov." She let me go with a fond ruffle of my hair. "I'm glad you're safe, Fae. Rest up while you can. Your training is doubling as soon as we get back home. No arguments." She then handed me over to Gray and marched over to where Jellal sat.

 _Please, please, let her stage fright have a sense of comedic timing only and not blow this for us...!_

Gray's body was cold, and that was uncomfortable, but I leaned into his familiar embrace anyway.

"We were worried about you." He said, his voice warmer than usual.

"I was scared." I replied simply.

We were just stating facts of the past that were no longer relevant to the present.

"She'll be fine." The doctor assured Gray. "She's didn't get any food or water, and she underwent severe mental strain, but she'll recover completely within a few days at the most."

"Thanks, doc."

 _ **The scans they performed looked for trauma and assault of any kind. Physical, mental, or sexual.**_

It was an unfortunate necessity that they had scans like this for kids my age. But there were nasty people all over the place, so I understood it.

Now that the doctor left us alone and Erza was drawing all the attention, Gray and I had some privacy. He sat down, and I folded myself up to cuddle him aggressively, just letting my stress bleed away.

"So you wanna tell me what you thought up?" Gray asked quietly. I glanced up at him, then around.

"What is it?"

"How close is the nearest Knight?" I asked him quietly. Muffliato had a personal range, but these wizards were all sensitive to underhanded magic. If one of them was too close, they would sense my spell as it went up and the nature of it. I would never forgive myself if my twitchiness was what blew his cover.

Erza would help smooth things over, her reputation and her now public personal history with Jellal would lend credibility to his cover as Mystogan. The betrayal and subsequent antagonism. Not the still present rosy feelings. Just thinking about it made the _Jerza_ ship pop into existence in the back of my head with a slew of evidence in favor of it. _Sorry Simon._ I thought with a faint wince. _I think you're out of luck here._ If only because Erza still resolutely saw Simon as a friend. A close, very trusted friend. But just a friend nonetheless. Jellal, she had been nursing a major crush on since childhood. A crush that had survived a perceived betrayal-

 _ **She's in love with him. Completely.**_

 _No need to destroy Simza like that!_ I complained at the voice in my head. G2 gave a shrug from where she hovered, centered in my magic, but now freed from the chains that had puppeted her back into the driver's seat. She seemed happier to be regulated to the back again though...In a, monotone, emotionless kind of way.

 _She was never meant to be a person, after all, just an automon._

She needed a name.

Something to give her a sense of identity. Something to further distance herself from the person she, we, had once been.

"If you need to talk about it in private, it can wait until then." Gray assured me, his arm tightening protectively. "I trust you...And Mystogan."

 _ **He has a hunch as to what you've done.**_

I nodded, sighing and turning to glance over his shoulder at the scene. Erza's bluster and attitude had made all but one of the Rune Knights go on about their business of scouting the woods for any more Dark Guild members. One who was particularly suspicious was hanging around and paying the price for daring to question Erza to her face without knowing her.

 _It's good entertainment._

It dimly occured to me that I could have pointed the Rune Knights right to wherever all the rest of the Light Guild coalition members were. But that would be showing far more of my magic than Makarov, or I, wanted to right now.

But that didn't have to keep me from using it for my own benefit.I cast my mind around to check up on everyone else in the area.

Blue Pegasus had connected with the Rune Knights and were busy logging and recording all the arrests, to collect and sort through any minor bounties that were claimed. The total pool would be split between all participating guilds as additional reward money.

Lamia Scale, or Lyon, was making shelters for the prisoners to be kept in until proper transportation could arrive to ship them away.

Lucy had found Wendy and Loke and were both heading this way, led by Wendy's nose.

Natsu-

 _ **Passed out cold from Dragon Force. Happy's carrying him this way.**_

...They'd find him eventually.

Lucy gave me the biggest hug ever upon seeing me, and since I had been set free from the tube and needle in my arm, I could return it with full enthusiasm.

Loke then scooped me up.

"So you survived Erza, princess!" I laughed nervously.

"Kinda...she still doesn't know all the details, and she's already threatened me with double training when we go home."

"Survived is right. What were you thinking, going off by yourself!?" Lucy demanded, hands on her hips. "We were running all over the place trying to find you. And as soon as one of us does, you go running off alone? And get caught by Brain?"

"Zero, technically."

"Which from what I've been told is much worse." Lucy nagged me playfully, shaking her finger in my face. "If you thought people were protective after the Tower of Heaven, you are going to be grounded for years for this, missy!"

"I'll just distract them until Mystogan takes me away for training." _Brand new magic circle!_

Developing a magic circle was little more than a sign of your magic settling more firmly into it's chosen course. It was always something to be celebrated.

My magic had decided that runes and words was the best way it could express it's inherent ability to use stories as power and inspiration. Thus, I had needed to develop a script that best used that ability. Something personal, that was mine down to the core. But now I had managed to organize my magic into a circle. A mandala-like pattern that expressed a signature spell. Not something I had taken from a story word for word, but that was completely and wholly _mine._

Everyone had a first spell that was theirs. And from that first spell, they built the rest of their arsenal around it.

 _I called that one Unseelie Arts. So that could leave me open to creating Seelie as well._

The division of the courts between Summer and Winter wasn't a common theme in many stories. But the division did make sense. How some fairies could be helpful, while others were absolutely terrifying and not approached at all.

 _I think I just accidentally set myself up as Mab to Erza's Titania._

After a bit more scolding, a few more hugs, and a lot of projected relief and happiness, Lucy went to check in with Erza and find something else to do. Loke disappeared with a sigh of relief, gone to his home plane to recuperate.

I wanted to stay near my friends as much as possible, but they also didn't want to bring up the gritty details of being adults around a kid.

 _I'll read them all later whether I want to or not, so while I appreciate the sentiment..._

One of the prisoner transports they had brought with them was being loaded up.

I saw them carry Midnight, who was still out cold, inside and sat up from where I sat on the sidelines.

 _Eric?_

If he was here then he could hear me...

He walked into my view with suppression handcuffs on his wrists and four guards escorting him. He looked terrible. The sleeves of his coat were gone, and most of him was covered in burns of various degrees. His face was horribly bruised, likely from his fight with Natsu since I couldn't remember if Loke ever got close like that. He was probably only capable of moving thanks to his Dragon Slayer magic and even then, he was limping.

There was a delay in loading Eric, since they were attempting to maneuver Hoteye inside the too small door. So I got to watch him closely and noticed something was wrong...

 _If you can hear me, can you look at me?_

He turned his head slightly to catch my eye.

 _Where's Cubellios?_

The snake would never be willingly separated from her partner. So what had happened to her? Did she get hurt in the fight with Natsu? I didn't deny the bubble of worry that formed in my stomach at the thought.

Of all the guild members of the Oracion Seis, Eric was the one I saw as my enemy the least. But then again, I had also gotten the chance to see a more human side of him than he let most see. The side he showed to Cubellios.

 _Are all of them like that?_ I wondered. _Do all of you have some small seed of humanity left in you?_

 _ **The Seal of Six Prayers.**_

G2 began to recite the six keys that had bound Zero.

Six pieces of human soul that had kept the monster at bay.

Eric's I already knew.

 _ **To hear the voice of my friend.**_

What about Midnight? The one who had taken me to Brain?

 _ **To sleep in a quiet place**_

The image of a dark haired boy tossing and turning in shackles, tear tracks glinting on his face as horror raged around him made something inside me twist sadly.

 _Racer._

 _ **To be faster than anyone. Faster even than pain.**_

 _Oh boy this is gonna hurt..._ A young boy with a big nose desperately trying to outrun the guards and grimhounds chasing him for sport.

 _Ok, bad, but bearable...Angel?_

 _ **To fade into the sky like an angel.**_

To be untouchable and unseen by her tormentors. These images were the hardest to look at and made a fist of sympathy twist in my gut. _Suddenly I get why she became so cruel...Ow... Hoteye?_

 _ **To be reunited with his long lost brother.**_

 _Well that makes me feel a bit better after Soriano._

I swallowed dimly before turning my attention to the last member of the Oracion Seis.

 _Brain...?_

 _ **That at the very least, his son would not disappear.**_

 _Holy Crap, Midnight- Macbeth is actually Brain's son!?_

The overwhelming sensation of all these fractions of humanity, these desperate hopes that had sustained these people through a hellish upbringing and life of crime...

 _You're all still people, aren't you?_

I had known and felt their stories, known they were real. But they had been the opposition, my kidnappers. I hadn't been able to think around my own fear enough to realize they were still people too. Even Brain.

This thought made a sardonic smile come to Eric's face as he turned away.

This left me to think.

 _What can I do to help? Prison won't change them. They're too bitter for that. Something has to actually..._

 _Someone has to do something._

Hoteye's wish was sweet. He wanted to find his brother again. So...who was his brother?

I sent my magic after the train of thought and came back with a shock.

 _ **Wally.**_

Erza's childhood friend, Wally, was Hoteye's brother...Apparently, when they were both taken, Brain had singled Richard out, as he was originally called, because he had a stronger latent magic. And taken him while leaving his brother in the tower. Just knowing his brother was alive would do a lot to giving him motivation to change.

How many more connections could I find? What else could be done to...reform these wizards?

Racer's dream to outrun his pain...wasn't something I could really help with. Brain, I couldn't find the pity or mercy in me to do much about. Macbeth though...

 _Design a dream catcher that absorbs sound._ I could already imagine the runes etched into the outermost rim to perform the functions I intended.

Angel...or, Soriano as G2 told me her name was, was another person I didn't know how to help. Not when all she really wanted to do was die. Was there someone, anyone in her past life that could maybe inspire a desire to live?

 _ **She does have a little sister.**_

 _I'll take it! Find her name and I'll track her down!_

Eric had turned his head back towards me and was watching me with an unreadable expression. He could hear everything going through my head. But what he thought of it...

"Get in the hole, snake." The knight behind him prodded him in the back with his spear tip and Eric moved forward obligingly. But he tripped, and only a sharp tug on the chains kept him from falling face first on the ground.

"Not so smooth now, are you?" I resisted the peevish urge to mute the chatty Rune Knight and watched Eric closely. I had a feeling he was winding up for something.

"Sorry, I think I left my balance back where the hothead schooled me."

 _ **Cubellios.**_

G2 confirming my hunch let me take the implication Eric had slipped me and follow it.

Cubellios was still unconscious, lying in the bushes. Eric had woken up, heard the Rune Knights coming, and used what little strength he had to hide her before he was arrested.

 _I'll find her._ I promised Eric. _I'll take care of her._

He didn't give any other sign that he had heard my thoughts, but a particle of tension left his shoulders and he entered the transport without a hitch or stumble.

So, now I was left with my next challenge.

I had recovered enough magic to be functional, but I was still running on practically no sleep over the last day. And with my guildmates throwing glances my way every few seconds, getting away to find the purple winged snake would be a lot harder.

 _Ok, which is most likely to be ok with my approaching a large venomous snake who was formerly an enemy?_

-vVv-

Fae's plan, however impromptu and reckless, had been brilliant.

Jellal and Mystogan were practically identical, and the S-class Mage was secretive enough that any small discrepancies in his act would be overlooked. Now, the pressure was on Erza to keep her composure around Jellal, something which she had never been very good at.

Most of the initial suspicion upon seeing his face had been cleared with enough of her stalking around, demanding action and that the enemy wizards they had stopped be detained instead of their guildmates. (She'd maybe been a little more...sharp than she intended. But she didn't like the way one of the Blast Spears was half angled at Jellal's back.)

"What is she doing?" One of the knights asked, head turned aside and watching Fae.

The girl who had just committed a national scale crime and involved all of them in it, was sitting on the ground, drawing on a bare patch of ground she had cleared in the grass.

"What she always does." Erza said with pride. "She's working on something."

"If she has an idea, she'll sit down and figure out a way to make it work, no matter what." Jellal said with the same rueful affection that most of the members of Fairy Tail had for their ward.

"Maybe-"

"I'll go check on her." Their eyes met briefly and in complete understanding. The knight seemed like he wanted to protest, but Jellal didn't give him another glance.

Erza let out a long, silent breath she hadn't been aware she was holding from the moment Jellal met her gaze. _Focus, Erza! Now isn't the time to get distracted! We're not completely safe yet!_

She went back to business.

Fae had saved Jellal, but had also set them into a precarious position. If Jellal was now discovered to be a fake, all of them would be charged with obstructing arrest. _._

She dimly heard Jellal and Fae discussing something in soft voices.

The same kind tones she remembered in Jellal's younger voice were back, replacing thick cruelty. And she heard the notes of contentment and happiness in Fae's words.

 _Good luck getting away._ She thought dryly. Jellal would no doubt try to leave, stealing someone's identity temporarily was one thing. But permanently? Have there be two 'Mystogans' in the guild? No, Jellal would never stand for that and Erza wouldn't either. No matter how badly she wanted to keep Jellal close...

She couldn't do it as Mystogan's expense. He was her comrade and guildmate, and had been for years.

"FAAAEE!" Natsu came tearing out of the trees at a full sprint, Wendy following behind as quickly as she could.

"Stand down. It's the Salamander." She cautioned the remaining Rune Knights. "It would _not_ be wise to get between him and Fae." Not after everything Natsu had done to find her again.

The Fire Dragon Slayer had yanked Fae up from the ground and was crushing her in a tight hug, which she was answering, tears glittering in her eyes as he spun her. They seemed to be talking over each other, with Happy squished between them, bawling his eyes out and clutching Fae's shirt.

It was a messy, noisy reunion. But Fae's quiet shell broke open and her joyous laugh started to flow out.

And it was all as it was meant to be again.

Erza's attention was taken by the Rune Knights bringing in another collection of dark wizards. When she looked around again, Jellal was kept company by Wendy who was using her healing magic on him, Carla close by her side. But Natsu and Fae were nowhere to be seen.

"Have you seen them?" She asked Gray who was half passed out leaning against a tree.

"They went off together a few minutes ago. They'll be back soon." he didn't seem too worried about them being alone. And neither was Erza. It was a very foolish creature that tried to hurt Fae after the display Natsu had put on today.

Defeating first Brain, then Cobra, followed almost directly by Zero? The Rune Knights were nervous around him normally, something in his aura making them aware they were in the presence of a predator. But now with this kind of battle record in the last day alone with no real rest? They would be be terrified. But mostly grateful it wasn't them he was angry at.

"Erza?" Fae's voice sounded and she turned towards her.

An odd sight greeted her.

Fae was carried piggyback on Natsu, Happy was sitting on her head. And wrapped around all of them was a large purple snake that Erza...dimly recognized. _Wasn't that Cobra's partner...?_

"She's alone now, and she needs help. Can she come home with us?"

 _Some children bring back a puppy. Or a kitten...And Fae asks to bring back a flying, acid spitting Violet Dracne._ She had encountered the breed on the first 10 year quests she had undertaken. They were extremely dangerous enemies, but not very intelligent. But this one seemed different, it was watching her with extreme awareness, curling around Fae with obvious discomfort. But there was a spark of something in its eyes...

"Fae, who is this?"

"She calls herself Cubellios. She's forgotten her real name."

"Oh?" Fae nodded, determination hardening her jawline.

"She's been cursed to be a snake for more than ten years, but she's actually a human. I want to free her." _Ah..._ A lost soul with no identity. Fae was somehow seeing herself in this...woman? Erza took a closer look at the dracne, and saw, now that she looked for it, the barest flicker of human awareness in it's eyes. She offered her hand to the large snake.

"Welcome to Fairy Tail, Cubellios. You're in good hands." Only when Fae hissed something at the snake did she place her tail in Erza's grasp in a parody of a handshake. The girl gave a few more encouraging sounding hisses and Erza just held in a sigh and a smile.

 _Oh Fae, whatever will you do next?_

-vVv-

In hindsight, I really should have expected someone to be glued to my side since the last time I wandered off, I had come back with Cubellios. I wasn't sure if my exhaustion finally caught up with me, or if I was given something to encourage rest, but I fell fast asleep with my new companion coiled around me for warmth. When I woke up, I was in a small, sturdy-looking hut, placed on a pallet with plenty of blankets.

 _ **You've been asleep for many hours. It is now mid morning.**_

Since it had been well into the evening when I was reunited with my guildmates, that meant it had now been a full two days since I was first abducted. My bracers were laying by my side. I had been wearing them when I was taken, but at some point, they had been removed. Apparently they had been recovered somewhere along the way.

Cubellios hissed at me, lifting her head to look at me.

I didn't understand her.

"Oh, hold on a second." I slipped on one of my bracers and touched a finger to one of the lacrima. " _Parseltongue."_ The serpentine looking rune settled in the crystal. The timer in my head that showed how long I could make the spell last just had an infinity sign next to it. That was good. It meant that I would take in enough ethernano throughout the day to compensate for whatever I was using to keep it active.

 **:Sorry. I needed to recast the spell to understand you:**

 **:It is alright:** Cubellios's head lifted and she nosed me gently, but still conveying a tremendous sadness. I hugged her head close to my chest and ran my hand soothingly down her back in answer to her wordless plea for comfort.

 **:I know. You miss him:**

Natsu had been completely agreeable to taking me to find Cubellios. Actually, taking him along had calmed her down from her initial panic upon waking up and realizing that Eric was gone. Natsu had a similar enough smell to placate her while I explained what had happened and what I had promised him.

She had naturally been heartbroken that she had failed Eric in battle, and that she hadn't been able to rouse herself quickly enough to try and protect him. But with patience and understanding, Natsu and I had persuaded her to give Fairy Tail a try and see if we couldn't make it so when she saw Eric again, she could speak for herself instead of needing me to translate.

Getting Erza's approval was something I had been worried about, but she had acquiesced and Cubellios was now my partner.

" _Maybe having someone like her around will keep you from getting abducted again."_ I had laughed, until Cubellios asked what had been said. Then the giant snake had thought about it, and agreed that no one would be coming near me unless she said it was ok first. Her unfriendly smile, filled with poisonous fangs, made me aware that I desperately needed to iron out any kinks that might keep Esuna from working on poisons...

After freshening up, changing clothes and casting a basic Warming Charm for my reptilian friend in light of the growing winter chill, Cubellios and I went outside.

The Cait Shelter guild was set up more like a small, native community rather than a city guild. There was a large fire blazing in the central area, and Wendy was tending to it with several older women.

"Good morning, child." Carla's voice made me look down.

The white cat was immaculately groomed and still looked undeniably snooty...but her smile was genuine.

 _ **She likes taking care of people, though she'd never admit it.**_

"Good morning. You're Carla, right?" The she-cat's whiskers twitched in amusement.

"You needn't pretend you didn't already know my name. Your friends were quite vocal about praising your skills before we received word that you had been kidnapped." I shrugged, fidgeting slightly.

"It feels rude to take advantage of my magic like that. It makes some people uncomfortable." It certainly unnerved some of the more irregular members of Fairy Tail. There were more than a few who only stopped by once or twice a week who I wasn't particularly close to, and many of them felt I was more than a little odd.

"There is no shame in using your talents. Ignoring it is as good as denying who you are." The cat turned towards the fire, and I saw she was hauling a bundle of herbs nearly as big as she was. "Come along, breakfast is almost ready, though you are the first of your friends to wake."

Cubellios and I followed Carla, the snake beside me hissing with delight as we drew within range of the fire's warmth.

Something was bothering me about this place. There were plenty of people up and moving about, but it still felt strangely empty. Like every sound I heard should be echoing.

My first instinct was to delve into the mystery with my magic, but Wendy spotted me and flew towards me to grab me in a tight hug.

"I'm glad you're awake! How are you feeling?" I smiled back at the girl

"A lot better. You've got some impressive magic. I barely even have psychic trauma from what happened." Wendy blushed faintly and then looked down at Cubellios.

Since she was about as big around as I was and three times as long, she was intimidating.

"And good morning to you too! I don't know what you normally eat, but we've got plenty of fish and meat for you to choose from, cooked and not." I relayed her words in Parseltongue and then spoke back to Wendy.

"She prefers lamb meat if you have any. And she has no preference for raw or cooked, just as long as there are no strong spices on it."

"I think we still have a haunch of lamb." One of the cooks mused to herself. "Wendy, be a dear and fetch it for our guest?" The girl shot a bright smile at her.

"Sure, Marr! Come on, Fae. Let me show you around."

 _ **She's never been around another child her age and she desperately wants a friend.**_

G2's comment made my heart melt a little bit. I looked at Cubellios.

 **:Want to come along, or would you rather stay by the fire?:**

She slid over the chilly ground to one of the rocks that would normally hold food to keep it warm.

 **:I will stay here, hatchling. Go explore with the wyrmling:**

 **:Wyrmling?:**

 **:She is a young dragon, like my friend and the Prince of Fire:** This was apparently a sufficient explanation. But it just left me with a very big fat question:

Why did Cubellios call Natsu a prince? Maybe it had something to do with Igneel being termed a Dragon King?

Either way, I followed Wendy through the huts and buildings.

Several parts of the community were still sleeping, but others were busy. I saw several women and men working on hauling large sections of thread out of the river in baskets. There was a massive loom being strung and two men arguing over whether they should use flax or cotton to fulfil the order. We walked past another section where leather was curing, stretched out on racks.

Wendy was going to the waterfall, and the storage cavern I read was behind it. People were coming and going from the entrance and she wove through them with practiced ease and I tried my best to follow her example.

In doing so, my arm brushed up against one man carrying a large load.

 _ **He's dead.**_

I choked a little and almost tripped.

 _What do you mean he's dead?_ I demanded of G2, but she was silent. She had said her part, and now she was quiet until I found more information to trigger my psychometric abilities some more. In practicing with my gift to use it deliberately, I was picking up a lot less random information, but it meant I usually needed to focus on what was going on around me.

But still, a pronouncement like that...that was scary.

"I hope this will be enou-...Are you alright, Fae?" Wendy asked, arms full of a wrapped up piece of meat about half her size.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Just reading something." Wendy's eyes lit with interest.

"Like with your magic? Your friends mentioned you had Story Magic..." _Ok, that's it. Somehow Wendy is joining Fairy Tail._ That kind of information was not something my friends gave out to strangers.

"Yeah. There's a lot of history around here to read too." Wendy looked a little hesitant, but she steeled herself and asked.

"So...does that mean you could see my dragon in you touched me?"

 _I don't even need to do that much._

I could see glimpses of a beautiful white dragon with soft looking feathers, immense wings and powerful bird like talons regarding a young Wendy with a mother's tender care.

"Yeah...Natsu mentioned that, huh?"

"Mmhm." Wendy sighed. "I know it's a little silly, but I really want to see her again. Even if it is just a memory."

"She was your mother, Wendy, there's nothing silly about wanting to see her and keep her memory alive." I didn't understand why some people thought they needed to apologize for missing people that they loved. "When did you last see her?"

"Seven years ago." _...OK, that can't be a coincidence._ Natsu and Gajeel had both lost their dragons seven years ago as well. On July 7th, in the year 777. That date was a magical powerhouse in terms of some rituals, so maybe there was a connection there?

 _For curiosity's sake..._

I touched Wendy's shoulder lightly and focused...

Reaching into her past, I found the same long, dark tunnel I saw in Gajeel and Natsu's history if I tried to locate the last place they had been with their dragons.

 _Once is happenstance, Twice a pattern, three times is deliberate action._

"What was she like?" Wendy's face light up with love and fondness as she began to tell me all about Grandeney the Sky Dragon.

About how much she had gone flying with her, and how she had never felt safer than she did when buried in her feathers.

About the lessons in magic and anatomy she had been given.

About how to read the wind, predict the weather and thrive in the outdoors.

"Some parts I can't remember as well." She admitted. "I was only four when she disappeared."

"Well, maybe whatever parts you can't remember so well, I can help recall. That way, you won't lose what you have left." It was a simple enough offer, but I saw gratitude and something that may have been tears shine in Wendy's eyes as she shot me a grateful smile.

Once the topic moved away from dragons, the ice was well and truly broken. Wendy told me about her home, and the people in it. The stories of the pranks and embarrassing moments.

But it was in her story about how she had fallen into a container of yellow fabric dye when it started again.

"-pushed me in!"

"I did no such thing!" An older gentleman with feathers braided into his iron grey hair protested with a chuckle. "You were just having a particularly klutzy day."

"Yes you did!"

 _ **He's dead.**_

 _What the actual-!?_ He was missing an arm, and his chest was oddly sunken in. Like something massive had stepped on him. Then I blinked and he was normal again.

A kindly woman ruffled Wendy's hair and handed us both some honeycomb.

 _ **Dead.**_

Her face was so cut up, it looked like she was wearing a flesh and bone mask. Then my vision cleared and she was smiling again.

A rangy teenager called a good morning with a string of fish over his shoulder, who Wendy blushed furiously upon seeing.

 _ **Dead.**_

There were six different spear wounds piercing his torso.

 _How can they all be dead?_ I asked, watching as everyone around me carried on with a perfect semblance of life. But all my magic was showing me was death, death and more death. Was I seeing their deaths?

No. I had Retrocognition. I saw the past, I had no talent whatsoever in diving the future.

 _ **You're not seeing how they will die. But how they did die.**_

G2's voice completely ruined my appetite as it hit me then.

I was in an honest to goodness ghost town. The only person I saw from here who didn't flash between the sights of death and various stages of decay perfect health was Wendy.

Wendy who talked to everyone, who everyone knew by name. Who everyone greeted with a smile.

 _This is her home._

 _Her family._

 _They're all dead._

 _..._

 _And she doesn't realize it._


	28. Returning Home

I tried to pretend I was actually hungry during breakfast. I did my best to keep smiling and not look at any of the other members of Cait Shelter for too long. Cubellios coiled around me, hissing in concern.

 **:Something alarms you:**

 **:They're all dead!:** I said, trying not to let my expression reveal how panicked I was. **:all of them except Wyrmling:**

The snake cocked her head and looked around, coiling around me and scenting cautiously.

 **:you are certain, hatchling?:**

 **:my magic does not lie:**

I flinched catching sight of one woman who had been eviscerated. A large snake head rested on my shoulder, a reassuring weight that helped me focus on tuning out the sights of nightmare fuel.

But other than being...well, dead, the Cait Shelter guild were wonderful hosts. They even built a large extra bonfire and stoked it with all kinds of spices and herbs to give it extra flavors for Natsu. He was thrilled that he could enjoy his favorite kind of food alongside everyone else. The bread was fresh, warm and wonderful. The spicy meat and broth mix was filling yet somehow light enough to feel like breakfast. There was fresh fruit everywhere, well preserved from the orchards Cait Shelter tended during the summer months.

But I couldn't choke down more than a few bites because I wanted to throw up the whole time.

The members of Cait Shelter still flicked back and forth between looking completely fine and showing me how they had died.

Not all of it was graphic. But I could see exactly what had killed them even if it wasn't obvious. One man had a single neat line across his throat. He was the victim of fratricide. His brother, who resembled him very strongly and was sitting beside him, laughing without a care, looked thin and emaciated. So did many others.

 _ **There was a siege, and food supplies ran out.**_

I looked down at my barely touched food and shivered. Cubellios nudged the woven blanket closer around my shoulders and tightened her coils around me.

"What's wrong Fae?" Lucy's question was the one I had been dreading. It made everyone look at me. And now that they were, they would see that something was bothering me. "Not hungry?"

"Not really." I admitted.

"You need to eat and regain your strength, child. You've been through a terrible ordeal." Charla had an excellent point. I had to eat if I wanted to feel steady, and sustain my magic throughout the day. But it was so hard when I was seeing so much...

One woman walked by, her death echo showing me she had been killed with magic. A curse that made her blood flash boil and evaporate in her veins

A hand came to rest on my shoulder. Jellal was looking at me with wordless concern.

" _Fae, tell me what's wrong."_ He spoke, using Telepathy to connect with me.

The sensation of death surrounding me made him start in surprise. It wasn't as malicious and cold as in the Tower of Heaven, but it was terrible and everywhere. A feeling of savage brutality. Of a complete lack of control over one's self.

 _ **The effects of Nirvana when used to turn the goodness within people to darkness.**_

This place had been a killing ground once. It might be lived in now, but the earth remembered how much blood had been spilled here. It wasn't what I was actually seeing in the people, but it was strong enough to make me very uncomfortable.

Jellal's brow furrowed over his mask, which he was wearing now to help preserve Mystogan's identity from being revealed to Natsu, Gray and Lucy.

" _I can't make any sense of it."_ I said apologetically. " _It's just too much all at once."_

" _Look at something else."_ Jellal advised. " _Anything else."_

" _How? It's everywhere."_ His eyes flashed down to my bracers.

" _Those have been with you through many happy times, correct?"_ I nodded, aware that people were watching our silent exchange. " _Then go back and review those happy memories. Don't let this place destroy your joy."_

The idea came to me abruptly.

 _A Patronus._

Condensed happy memories, a shield between you and whatever was trying to get you down. And I did feel as though this place could suck my soul right out of me if I would let it. I didn't even need to cast the actual spell, just the mental parts of it...

I closed my eyes.

 _Fishing with Natsu, then getting soaking wet when my improvised bait drew in a catfish large enough to swallow Happy._

 _Riding roller coasters with Gray, dragging him all over the place, and recovering his clothes before he noticed he was stripping them off._

 _Training with Erza. Seeing the pride in her eyes, and feeling an answering satisfaction as I grew._

 _Discussing books and stories with Lucy and helping her iron out her own idea._

 _Following Mystogan, asking him everything, and getting some answers. His presence at my back made me feel not just safe, but capable and empowered. He wouldn't let me be hurt, but he would also let me test myself._

 _The Welcoming Brawl that had broken out when Juvia and Gajeel were welcomed into the guild. Just as quickly, it had faded into a riotous celebration of our family growing._

I opened my eyes to see amber runes hovering over my fingertips. I took them and anchored them to a lacrima in my bracers where they remained, glowing steady and bright, providing a warm buffer against the death that echoed in my senses.

 _Not..the right color._

It took a little extra effort to make the runes turn silvery white, but I felt the shield grow noticeably stronger. Just aligning it more closely with my idea of what should be effective made it much more durable.

When I looked around again, I didn't see the death echoes of the ghosts of Cait Shelter. Only their shadows revealed their true fates. They were still misshapen with death.

"Better?" Jellal asked quietly.

I gave him a smile.

"Better. Thanks!"

 _ **Fairy Tail will be gaining three new members.**_

My shield helped me eat and keep my food down, and genuinely enjoy the present joy in spite of the bloodstained past that lay around me. I caught sight of the Cait Shelter guild master looking at me with a strangely knowing expression after breakfast had concluded.

"A Seer of your capabilities hasn't been seen in these parts in a very long time."

"I'm not a Seer, Master Roubaul."

"A seer can be classified as 'one who sees what others cannot'. Does your gift not qualify?" _Well when you put it like that..._

"I guess."

He chuckled, moving towards a hut set near the center of their little village.

"Come here, little historian. I have a gift for you to take back to your home. I hope you will accept it." I rose to follow, faintly hearing Cubellios follow.

 **:What does the old one want?:**

 **:I don't know yet:**

I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I entered the hut and found it completely bare. Devoid of life, of anything. It was literally just empty walls. Roubaul settled onto the ground in a cross legged seat with a deep sigh. When he lifted his head to look at me, the humanity seemed to have thinned. I was not looking at a person.

"So you're dead too." The words slipped out before I could stop them. I hadn't gotten a good look at his shadow but it hadn't seemed too distorted...

"Oh yes. And I am deeply sorry that you had to see what remains of my people." He bowed his head in obvious sorrow. "We were once more than what you see."

"I know. I'm sure that your history is wonderful, but..." I swallowed, settling down on the bare ground as well, Cubellios winding around me automatically. "The downfall of any kingdom, race or tribe is the most defining point in it's most recent history. I would need to be able to look past all of that before I could see how you were before Nirvana destroyed you..."

"And- you can't quite stomach that yet." His expression was paternal and gentle.

"No." If there ever came a time when it didn't bother me, I would be very, very worried.

"I understand. The events of the past were as unpleasant for me to live as they no doubt are for you to relive." He extended a hand, a spell instantly producing a scroll about the size of my hand. (An ancient Archive spell that had long since gone out of use, because who used scrolls these days?) "But one day, I hope that the Nirvit's will be remembered for their golden age instead of their foolish downfall. And that both our triumphs and our errors will teach future generations." The scroll settled on the ground before me and I looked up at him hesitantly. He gave an indulgent smile.

"My tribe had many wonders to give to the world. I am asking you, Celeste D Faerun, to learn from us, and pass on what magical knowledge is safe to share to others."

My eyes then promptly widened until I couldn't look more like a deer in the headlights.

The Nirvit's were a tribe in which every single person was a wizard. Magic was more than just a common tool to them, it was their culture and the air they breathed. The knowledge, the history of how that developed and how they had grown...

 _ **The Nirvit's enjoyed more than five centuries of prosperity even in the midst of the wars of the time period.**_ G2 added.

That meant that there were probably several centuries of concentrated magical research in the tiny, innocent looking scroll lying at my feet.

"Given the uniqueness of your gifts, I would be astounded if everything we have ever done found a use in your hands. But I understand inspiration can come from anywhere."

"Should I give this to Wendy?" I asked after I recovered a bit. "She's a member of your guild, an adopted part of your tribe..."

"Wendy's magic is firmly settled in the arts she learned from her dragon mother." Roubaul gestured and the scroll landed in my hands. "She learned survival, our medicine, some craft magic, and a bit of wind magic, but not much else. I cannot maintain this illusion of life for much longer now that my purpose has been fulfilled."

 _ **He was only lingering because of his guilt and determination to see Nirvana be destroyed one day.**_

I walked out of Roubaul's presence with the scroll containing the entire history of the Nirvit tribe and their magical innovations. The other wizards were already starting to prepare to return home. Magi-motors were already waiting for us, it would be a few hours drive to the shore, and then a boat ride down the coast back to Magnolia. Natsu was eyeing them warily like he was expecting them to come alive and attack. Lucy was happily chatting with some of the...guild members of Cait Shelter, and they were all plying her with locally made clothes and accessories. I saw Erza hovering nearby and also saw her stow a very well made set of leather armor.

 _You never know when metal is a bad idea._

 **:hatchling?:** Cubellios laid her head on my shoulder. **:your den master will not object to my joining with you, will he?:**

 _Makarov?_

 **:He never turns anyone away if they need a new home:** I assured her. **:He will be the first one I speak to about finding a way to break your curse:**

This made her a little uneasy, but she nodded, a determined look coming back into her eyes.

 **:I do not know how comfortable being a two leg will be after all this time. But I will do anything I must in order to speak to my friend:**

I gave the big snake a hug, glancing down her smooth back curiously.

"Natsu said you had wings when you fought, didn't you?" I saw muscles flex and bunch and the snake suddenly had wings.

 **:My friend needed me to fly, so I flew:**

 **:But your kind doesn't normally have them, do they?:**

 **:I do not know. I have been able to produce them for many seasons now:**

Maybe it had something to do with the spell that had turned her into a snake. Her memories showed she had been much smaller as a young snake, small enough to comfortably wind around a young Eric's forearm with no trouble. Now she was big enough for him to ride and fly with?

 _I'll need to research dracne and find out what Cubellios can do that they can't._ Ideally, that would mean going and studying the snakes in person. But I had a better chance of getting Juvia to swear off Gray than getting permission to go there, or being able to sneak that far without being noticed.

The violet scaled snake fell in beside me as I went to collect my own bag of gifts from the enthusiastic Nirvits. Every single one of the wizards was leaving with the best made items the guild had to offer. I occasionally read some of them setting things aside, intending on giving them to Wendy.

 _ **They know what is coming. Those who are not simply illusions maintained by Roubaul himself are the spirits themselves, kept stable and present through his magic.**_

I couldn't even fathom how much magic power it must have taken. To create illusory companions, an entire guild of them, and have them be strong enough to not only affect the physical world, but also gain credible status as a registered guild. _Just how much power did he have when he was alive?_

 _ **Over 9000.**_

 _...Did you just make a joke?_

 _ **...**_

-vVv-

When Roubaul broke the news, I felt Gray and Lucy's eyes flash over to me right away. They had realized what my odd behavior must have meant. But I was watching Wendy and Carla.

 _How would it feel to have everything I knew and everyone I loved evaporate into thin air?_ Wendy was already starting to cry, disbelief on her face. Cubellios shifted her coils in anxiety, sensing her distress even as the people of Cait Shelter started to disappear before our very eyes.

Tears blurred my own vision with empathy.

Lisanna had died. Laxus had been banished. My trust and closeness with Freed destroyed. All relationships that had simply vanished.

A forked tongue flicked out and lifted the tear from my face as Cubellios looped one of her massive coils around my shoulders.

 **:I will be alright. She's the one who needs help:**

I reached out towards my guildmates, my hands winding into Natsu's and Erza's.

Natsu had lost Igneel, his father. Gray had watched his family die and then his teacher sacrifice herself. Lucy had witnessed her mother slowly succumb to Magic Deficiency Disease. Erza saw Rob, Master's friend, put himself between the enemy and her without a moment's hesitation. He had known as she did that he would not survive when he did that.

 _Loss is a universal uniter. We've all felt it._

I couldn't say who took the first step forward of our group. I just know that I ended up hugging her as tightly as I could, while both of us were being hugged by Erza.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Wendy..."

 _I'm sorry I knew this was coming. I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to make it stop. I'm sorry..._

"I did this..." Wendy sobbed into my shoulder. "If I hadn't destroyed Nirvana-!"

"Then thousands of people would be suffering and we would be caught in a fate worse than death." Erza said gently, carding her fingers through Wendy's dark blue hair. This elicited a fresh wave of sobs from Wendy.

"But they-he, they stayed because of Nirvana! I destroyed it, I made them leave-!"

"Blaming yourself is normal." Gray said in a melancholy tone. "You wonder, and worry about what you could have done differently."

"What if it would have changed things. What if they're not here because of me?" Lucy picked up the thought, her own eyes overly bright.

"But they're not!" Wendy howled. "They're gone! My guild is gone!"

"They were ghosts, Wendy." I said, feeling her fists clench against my back. "Most were projections of Roubaul's memories. Some were the spirits of his family that he sustained. In pretty much every situation where there are ghosts who linger with unfinished business and unanswered regrets, they go dark, and vengeful. But that didn't happen here." I pulled back slightly to meet her eyes.

"They had you. They got to love you, and enjoy peace in living with you and watching you grow up. You hear me? Peace, finally, after centuries of war and of holding on to their guilt for creating Nirvana. And you set them free. You gave them peace in their extended lives, and let them pass on in peace. It's always gonna hurt that they're gone-."

"But-." It was Natsu's quiet word that made Wendy's face lift, tear tracks glittering from reddened eyes. He rapped a fist gently onto Wendy's chest. "-they never die in here."

The dam broke yet again and she buried her face in Erza's shoulder and let out a fresh wave of tears.

We started out several hours behind schedule to give Wendy all the time she wanted and needed to grieve and say goodbye to her old life. Carla and I kept close to her the whole time, prodding her to keep moving in her daze. The projections had packed Wendy's bags, but she still moved through the empty huts like she expected to see someone there. It looked like everyone had just walked away from their work. There were baskets of flax still waiting to be spun. A half finished tapestry on the biggest loom.

But the air was still and quiet.

Now the most recent event for the Nirvit tribe that I saw was their being put to rest. The bloody story had a...happy ending for them. They had been able to leave, knowing that Wendy and Carla would be taken care of, and Nirvana would never hurt anyone ever again.

-vVv-

Wendy and I sat with Carla and Cubellios in the back of one car that was mostly filled with Erza's luggage as she drove towards home. Jellal drove the other car, being the only one of the mages headed to Magnolia whose magic had recovered enough to even try to drive it. (I wasn't counting Natsu, though he was back at 100%. He went green around the gills just by sitting in the car.)

Wendy, seemingly unaffected by the rocking motion of the car, simply sat with Carla in her arms and stared at the road ahead. The white feline had started purring when Wendy had mechanically picked her up. Cubellios, wrapped around me to share my seat and the limited space more efficiently, looked back and forth between the two of us.

 **:hatchling, the wyrmling's distress is upsetting you. But she should speak about it before it has the chance to fester:**

Wiser words have never been spoken from a comparative mute. But...

 **:I will talk to her, eventually:** I promised the snake. **:but she just lost them. She can have a little time just to be sad before I ask her to try and be happy again:**

"Are you actually talking to her?" Hearing her say something took me aback. This question was the first thing I heard Wendy say since she stopped crying about half an hour after Cait Shelter dissolved.

 _Oh my gosh...worst accidental pun ever._

"Yeah. It's called Parseltongue."

"Can you do it with other languages too?" Wendy's eyes still looked hauntingly dry and distant, but she was trying to be present. Actively trying to move on. _That soon?_

"I...don't know. I've never tried." Some of my thoughts must have showed on Wendy's face since she gave me a smile that hurt to look at.

"It's not the first time I've lost family. It's ok." _Oh...that's true._ Wendy had lost Grandeeney and retained enough memory of her to still use her magic and miss her. Considering she could have been much older than four, that was extremely impressive.

"It never is ok, no matter how often it's happened before." Wendy shook her head, and I actively saw her shake away the shadows and doubts of the past.

 _ **She is choosing to believe she will not lose her next family.**_

The sheer emotional resilience that showed in Wendy's character was impressive and humbling to me.

I had been a mess for a few weeks before even being willing to talk about Lisanna not being with us and coping with it. Wendy wasn't denying being sad, she just wasn't depriving herself of present happiness.

 _I...I don't think I could do what she is._ I admitted to myself, my arms tightening slightly around myself.

If I lost Fairy Tail...I didn't see how I would ever recover. I didn't doubt that I could, eventually. But it was like the path to emotional recovery was blocked. I just couldn't imagine life without them, at least one of them.

"You're really brave, Wendy." I remarked, looking out at the scenery as it flew past.

"No I'm not. I'm terrified."

"I know. But you're not letting that stop you from facing the future. Even though you don't know what's coming. And even though this came as the worst kind of surprise. You're looking forward and not letting grief make you go stagnant."

 _It's much more than I could do in your place._

-vVv-

Wendy's recovery of her spirits culminated in her asking Erza as we pulled into the harbor if she could join Fairy Tail. I didn't even let the woman answer.

"Yes!" I jumped, maybe a little higher than a normal person should have been able to, and whooped. "Absolutely yes!"

"Ahh...I'm glad you're excited?" Wendy sounded uncertain and looked very taken aback. Erza laughed.

"Don't mind Fae, Wendy. I think she's just excited to have someone else close to her age as a friend."

"Oh..." I only half heard what they were saying as I ran over to where Natsu was suffering in the other magi-motor and hauled him out.

"Natsu, Wendy and Carla are gonna join Fairy Tail!" And it was a complete guarantee since hell would freeze over before Makarov said no to the girl. And wherever Wendy went, Carla would follow. Thus was the rule of talking cats and Dragon Slayers.

 _Is it a rule or is it just for Natsu and Wendy? Neither Sting nor Gajeel seem to have one._

"Really!?" Happy looked ecstatic, popping into the air in delight. Carla did not look amused.

"I suppose."

"That's great, you two, we'd be happy to have you!" Lucy said, beaming at them both.

 _ **Loke is coming.**_ I tilted my head at G2's warning.

"Hey Lucy, did you need to talk to Loke about something? He's coming."

"What? So soon after burning through all that energy?" Her smiled faded and her brow furrowed. "I hope nothing's wrong..."

"Nothing is as far as I can tell."

We loaded the luggage, and soon I got to experience what having a lack of sea legs was like. I wasn't sea sick, but I was definitely shaky. Humming a pirate ditty soon got me in the right mindset and the right balance.

"Wendy, why don't you get seasick like Natsu?" I asked her as I tried to wake across the rolling deck without stumbling.

"I don't know. I guess I haven't had a lot of experience on moving vehicles, so I never thought about it."

"Well, if you don't know..." _Do you know why?_ I addressed the question to G2, who responded promptly.

 _ **A Dragon Slayer's senses are heightened to superhuman levels, including their sense of balance. As such, their senses can easily be overwhelmed if they feel a lack of control over what is going on around them.**_

"Fae? Fae are you ok?" I noticed Wendy was waving her hand in front of my face and looking concerned. "I know I got rid of all your head trauma..."

"Oh, oh, no, I'm fine, Wendy really. I do that alot. I can learn a lot from just asking my magic questions and hearing the answers can sometimes distract me from whoever I'm talking to." Most of the guild was accustomed to me zoning in and out of conversations. But Wendy, not so much.

"That could be dangerous..."

"I know, it's why I only let myself follow the deep questions when I know I'm safe." I looked up at the mast and the crow's nest and grinned. "Say, Wendy. You want to overcome your fear of heights, right?" She went very still.

"I get the feeling that no matter what I say, you're going to make sure I do get over it one way or another."

"I'm reckless and stubborn, but overall, very well intentioned." I assured her with a pat on the arm. "I promise, whatever I drag you into, you will be perfectly safe the entire time. I've had a lot of time to work out safety precautions for just about every major accident." It took up just about every lacrima in my bracer to tie them all to me, but when I had them all up and active, I was proof against...a lot. I could, theoretically, jump off a cliff, through a cloud of freezing rain and thunder, hit my head two hundred feet down and land in a boiling cauldron without suffering more than a few bruises.

The Sky Dragon Slayer was a little pale, but she smiled.

"Wow, that's...really thorough of you."

"Yeah. It's part of my deal with my teachers. If I want to experiment with my magic, I have to have contingencies in place for the top ten most likely things to go wrong."

"It must be great to have so many people to learn from." Wendy said a little wistfully. "Cait Shelter was all about home and creation magic. Not a lot of overlap between that and what I do..."

I nudged her in the ribs gently, grinning.

"There are only two other wizards out of the hundred-some members of Fairy Tail that have Rune based magic similar enough to mine to actually help. But everyone pitches in with an idea, or even just by being a sounding board! You'll have it way better than me: You'll have Natsu and Gajeel to help get more in touch with your draconic side!"

A low moan from the Fire Dragon Slayer made us both look at him as Happy sat on the railing next to him holding a fishing rod that was way too big for him and looking as happy as a clam. Cubellios was sunning herself nearby, dozing contentedly in the warm sunlight. The wind was cool, but getting warmer as we travelled.

"If it means feeling like that on anything that moves..." I rubbed the back of my head.

"Yeah, that's the thing. Natsu only feels like that on non-sentient transportation. He's fighting fit when he's flying with Happy."

"Have you tried flying with him?" Wendy asked. "Maybe whatever is moving him has to be alive for him to not get sick." She moved over to him, her hands glowing. "But I do know a spell that works on motion sickness...I've never gotten to try it on anyone."

I hopped onto the railing, gazing out over the rolling waves. There were several spells I wanted to try because their setting required either a lot of water or proximity to the ocean in order to function, but it was kinda nice and peaceful just to sit for a while and do nothing. Gray was near the prow, keeping a look out to make sure our way ahead was clear. Erza was talking to the crew and pretending not to be sad that Jellal was subtly avoiding her. Lucy-

Was speaking to some Celestial Spirits I didn't recognize.

 _ **Scorpio, Gemini and Aries.**_

I glanced through G2's summary of what had happened and smiled when the spirits handed over their keys willingly and without hesitation.

 _They've been through a lot. It'll be good for them to have a wizard who cares about them as much as Lucy will._

"Is Aquarius still upset with me?" Lucy asked Scorpio dryly. The olive skinned spirit chuckled.

"Oh, she's trying not to act like it around me, but I know she's spittin' mad. She'll get over it, Miss Lucy don't worry about it."

 _Oh no Lucy, you should definitely worry about it._

With nothing of any real interest happening on deck, I turned my attention to G2. She really needed another name.

 _ **It is not my story.**_

And what she wasn't saying was that it wasn't necessary for her to have a name.

 _But you are a part of mine, and so you should have one. Or something that's more significant than a number a deranged madman gave you. And even for our magic, naming something gives it power._

I wanted a name that would give the conscious residing in my magic an identity without overwhelming mine.

 _Ok, my magic is Story Magic. She's living in my head, she's been telling me pieces of stories the whole time... Bard? No, that'll just make me think of the Hobbit._

I kept contemplating this train of thought up until a blast of fire came from over my shoulder.

 _ **Wendy has cast the Troia spell, which temporarily cures motion sickness, on Natsu.**_

This proved to be distracting enough to entertain me for at least the next hour, and by then Erza had finished her business enough to address me.

She was standing alone by the port side of the ship, gazing out over the water. I lightly hopped onto the railing, sitting down with my legs hanging over the side. I could almost feel Erza consider pulling me back to full safety, but she decided against it.

"I've informed Master and sent a message to Mystogan letting him know what has happened. They were both very surprised."

"That I did something like this or that this was what I did?"

"The latter. But the Master has expressed surprise and concern over your lack of effort in mending ties with Freed."

"I'll talk to him when he's ready to talk." I said, aware that I was in a petulant, defensive posture with tightly folded arms. "He wanted me to just read him instead of explaining himself."

"And it's your right to want that." _But enough is still enough._ Was what she wasn't saying. But even thinking about speaking to Freed made something shift inside me. Whether it was guilt, anger or reluctance, I couldn't tell.

A gentle hand was laid on my arm. Erza's eyes were knowing and patient as she looked at me. Very different from the usual face she portrayed to the world. The tough, no nonsense, raging terror Titania, compared to Erza Scarlet, the surrogate mother/big sister for everyone in the guild.

"How long do you plan on staying angry at him?"

"I don't think I'm still angry." I admitted, kicking my legs gently in the open air.

"Then what are you?" My hands tightened on the railing.

"Erza...Brain managed to control me because he convinced me that I was someone else. Someone who was only in Fairy Tail to spy. Someone he had broken and trained to turn into a soulless automaton at the use of a command phrase. And only when I focused on the person being in Fairy Tail has made me could I fight back against his control. There is no Celeste D Faerun without Fairy Tail. What Freed tried to do...what Laxus persuaded him to do, would have destroyed the very thing that let me choose to be a person instead of a tool." I looked back to the waves, a low knot twisting in my stomach.

"I can, and have forgiven him for going along with Laxus's plan. I know how highly he regards him. And misguided and overreaching or not, Laxus thought he was doing the right thing for the guild. But I don't know if I can accept that he one way or another, he was trying to destroy my home. The one place where I have an identity... No matter what his reasons were."

I had given a brief summary of what Brain had done to me in my childhood, and Erza had already called Master to tell him what had happened. I didn't know it was possible to feel magic pressure through a communication lacrima, but Master's rage had sent goosebumps down my back. But details of how it had felt, and what all it meant, I had left out of my initial report

"So it isn't just treason against the guild you hold against Freed, it's a personal attack on you." I didn't answer. But a light touch on my shoulder made me aware that I was leaking magic.

I took a deep breath, forcing my magic to settle back into my core and resume a regular circulation in my body.

"Yeah. That fits."

"Have you talked about this with anyone?" I shook my head.

"Everyone else seems to be moving on, as though it never happened. I didn't want to bring up bad feelings."

"So instead you let yourself wallow in bad feelings alone?" The Requip Mage sounded amused and she was smiling faintly when I threw a half hearted glare at her.

"What?"

"No matter how smart you are, Fae. You can still fall into the same trap of thinking that you have to carry your problems alone when you don't. That's why we are a family. Because none of us could have made it alone." This made me squirm a little though I tried not to let it. Erza wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close in a hug, her cheek resting against mine.

"I'll mediate between you and Freed so you can talk these things out. Or I'll ask Mystogan to do it on your behalf. But you will need to talk to him about this and explain exactly why you're still being so distant with him even months after the fact. This is hurting both of you."

I sighed, feeling something loosen inside me in surrender. I slid from the railing onto the deck and leaned into her embrace, drawing strength and comfort from it.

"It won't be the same..."

"That's the point Fae. Everything must change, but there's nothing stopping it from being a change for the better."

That was true...My and Freed's relationship before had been my usually deferring to his experience and knowledge because I cared about his opinion and trusted him explicitly. But the dynamics had changed now. I still cared about him, but I didn't trust him as naively as before. I might not get my teacher, or protector back. But maybe I could salvage a friendship from this wreckage.


	29. Fairy Tail's Cutest Team

Makarov beamed down at Wendy from his perch on the bar. Wendy smiled politely back at him, although she seemed slightly bemused by his eccentric appearance.

"So, Wendy. Erza tells me you would like to join Fairy Tail."

"Yes sir! Both of us." Wendy and Carla were standing side by side, and while she looked eager, I could sense an undercurrent of nervousness in her.

"I don't suppose they mentioned the entry test?" Wendy went pale.

"T-test?" Her voice squeaked a little. I saw people attempting to conceal snickers all around as they tried to keep going around their normal business while not obviously watching. 'Normal business' being a relative term. They were moving furniture aside to open a spot for dancing, pulling out more food from the pantry, and generally preparing for a party.

I left Wendy to sweat for a little bit as I leaned over to Vijeeter to whisper in the Dance Mage's ear.

"I don't think she'll be up for a Brawl right away. Pass it on, and tell them to keep it cool until the party is in full swing."

"Yeah, it don't look like it." he agreed in an undertone, grinning down at me. "Looks like you may have a little buddy with you in your bunker for the first time." I grinned back, showing a few more teeth than normal.

"I'm not planning on being in the bunker anymore." Using my new Magic Circle in a Welcoming Brawl would be a much more effective way of demonstrating my new level of skill than waiting for word of mouth to get the job done. Besides, with Wendy here, and a full member despite only being a little older than I was, I was hopeful that I might get a guild mark sooner rather than later.

Wendy was stammering with nerves and Makarov was clearly enjoying teasing her, but eventually he cracked and laughed.

"I'm only joking, Wendy. There is no test." Mira was already ready with the stamp. "We started the paperwork as soon as Erza sent word of your desire to join us. The only question there is now is where would you like your marks?" Wendy's face lit up with untold joy and I was then subjected to a mass 'aww' from the crowd.

"She's so cute and tiny...!"

"Yeah, but remember, it's always the quiet ones." I knew people were looking at Mira when they said this.

Wendy took her Fairy Tail guild mark on her right shoulder in dark blue, and Carla let it fall on her back in pearl pink.

"Alright Fairy Tail!" Makarov said, raising his voice. "We have two new members of Fairy Tail to welcome! Get to it!" A roar of human noise made Wendy jump in surprise and look around with wide eyes.

"What?"

"Every time a new person joins, we throw a party for them." I explained, coming up to the two of them. "It's pretty fun!"

"We would never see this kind of behavior in Cait Shelter." Carla said with a poignant sniff. Wendy didn't even flinch at the reminder.

"Well, yeah. But Carla, this isn't Cait Shelter. This is Fairy Tail, and we have our own way of doing things." I grabbed Wendy's arm and pushed her forward to the bar where food was already being brought out.

"Hurry up and grab some food, they're waiting for you!" It was the standard free for all for food and drinks, but people were waiting for Wendy even as Mira started up a lively tune on her guitar, drawing in every voice to sing along.

The sound seemed to be bothering Cubellios since she had quickly made herself scarce on the second floor. But Makarov was waiting for me to explain why I had brought back a venomous snake that was big enough to eat me.

I wove through the partygoers to where Makarov sat watching the chaos with fondness but a little ripple of sadness as well.

 _ **He misses Laxus.**_ As a guild master, he couldn't regret banishing him from the guild. But he could miss his grandson, since he had practically raised him after Ivan-

 _ **Was banished for legitimate crimes.**_

 _That has secret written all over it. Don't touch it!_

"So Fae, you seem to have brought several new friends to us." _Or maybe he wants to talk about Jellal..._

"...I am absolutely not sorry for this problem."

"I wouldn't expect you to be. Erza has informed me about your suggestion to keep Jellal safe and it is a good one, though it will require careful coordination between him and Mystogan."

"I actually need to talk to you about my other friend." The old man looked down at me with a grave expression.

"Erza also informed me of that situation. She mentioned her name was Cubellios, correct?"

"Yes, Master." I hopped onto the bar beside him. "She's been under this curse for at least ten years."

"This likely means there are counter measures in place to prevent anyone from interfering, and some components to force the spell to renew itself instead of dissolving as most transformations do."

"I know."

"It will doubtless take many years of effort and a great deal of trial and error."

"Mostly error."

"A curse of this magnitude will not be an easy task."

"Master, I know this will be hard. I know it will take a long time. I know I will fail hundreds of times before I get anywhere. But Cubellios needs help." And that was all I needed to know.

Living as she had would be incredibly dehumanizing, not being able to speak, or be treated as the person that she was. Only her friendship with Eric kept her from becoming a mindless animal from sheer frustration.

Makarov assessed me one more time...then nodded.

"If you feel this strongly about it, Fae, I would recommend speaking with the other curse breakers in the guild to learn where to start."

 _Levy, no problem. But...Freed's the other professionally certified curse breaker._

It seemed like everything I did was nudging me towards my former teacher. He was not with the other members of the Thunder Legion, but engaged with Mira on the far side of the bar. Since she had smacked him around in She-devil form, apparently Dark Ecriture recognized her as a friend. A classic take on Defeat means Friendship.

"I know." _I know you mentioned this to Erza. I'll deal with it-_

 _ **Mystogan is on the second floor.**_

 _Later. Totally dealing with it later._

I hopped down from the bar beside Master and wove through the crowd to the stairs. I'd have flown up, but I was still not supposed to fly indoors except in emergencies. The stairs were thickly occupied with both wizards and outsiders who had come to join the party, but I moved through them as if they weren't there. Mystogan was in one of the private rooms he used to come and go in his mist form and he caught me as I jumped at him.

"I'm sorry I didn't ask before-"

"Sh." He exhaled, petting my hair gently. "I'm far more concerned about you than about you borrowing my identity to save an innocent man's freedom." I had long since cried out all my negative feelings about being kidnapped and magically controlled and everything that had happened. But there were still a few little tears trying to force their way out as I basked in being near Mystogan again.

"I don't think I'll be going far afield for awhile." He told me, pulling back gently with a fond look in his eye. "You are far too trouble prone for me to risk that again." My brow furrowed.

"But...the Anima-"

"Is almost entirely neutralized and you are more important." Now if that didn't just give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling... I couldn't fight the smile on my face.

 _ **He loves you very much.**_ G2 remarked. _**He will not leave you behind as he did her.**_

I saw a flash of what was unmistakably a young Wendy looking up at a younger Mystogan.

"...Fae, what did you just read?" And he had seemingly recognized my expression. Apparently I had a distant look come over me when I was hearing something.

"It was you Wendy met, not Jellal..." I said quietly, looking up at him with growing excitement. "You were still using your actual name though, so she didn't know the difference!" Wendy had accepted that Jellal didn't know her, but I could tell that she was very sad that he didn't seem to remember her.

"Yes. The Anima was far more active then, and she was too sickly to continue to travel with me. I checked on her every few months at first, but she seemed to be settling into Cait Shelter so well, I didn't want to uproot her." And Wendy would have gone in a heartbeat. A common trait among the Dragon Slayers I knew was unwavering loyalty. One could almost refer to it as imprinting. Wendy would have dropped everything and followed Mystogan to the ends of the earth regardless of her age.

I never would have guessed dragons were such social creatures.

"You have to talk to her."

"Fae-"

"No! You have to! Mystogan, her mom is something is someone she can barely remember. Her guild family, who she loved, literally disappeared, evaporated...But you're here, you're real. You weren't a dream. You can help her bridge her past into her future with us." I knew I was throwing puppy dog eyes at him. (I could never tell if they worked on Mystogan or if he was just reasonable to some requests.) But I couldn't help it. I owed Wendy a lot, and I knew she was trying to deal with a lot of change in her life. She was smiling and moving forward, but I felt that part of her was still terrified about what was ahead.

"After the party. I promise." And Mystogan always kept his word. So I was put at ease.

 **:hatchling?:** Cubellios poked her head around the corner. **:Is your den always so loud?:**

"Friend of yours?" Mystogan asked with a smile at the richly colored reptile.

"Yep! Cubellios, come here!" I didn't hiss, but she understood all the same, slipping into the room and giving the kneeling wizard a look over.

 **:This is my teacher:** Names didn't seem to have direct translations in Parseltongue. "Mystogan, this is Cubellios. She's actually human. She'll be staying with us while I work on breaking her curse."

"Pleased to meet you Cubellios." Mystogan said gravely. She dipped her head in acknowledgement of his words. She could understand humans, since that had been the only way Eric could talk to her. But the concepts still reached her more clearly in her own language.

Not hers. The language of her present species. She's human.

"Master mentioned you found a cursed individual. What are your first ideas?"

"Read her history as far back as I can to see when she was cursed, and work out the how and what the original purpose of the spell was from there."

-vVv-

Ok, so my intentions of participating in Wendy and Carla's Welcoming Brawl were put on hold. Mystogan and I started to work out how to help Cubellios escape her life as an animal. And G2.0 casually mentioned that Mystogan was unwilling to let me out of his sight just yet.

 _ **You are his student, and the one person he is closest to in all the guild. You were endangered while he was not there to protect you. He feels guilty as if his absence allowed you to be taken.**_ That was...frankly ridiculous. I had been snagged from inside our own guild hall. Even if Mystogan had been nearby, unless he had literally been sitting on me the entire time, there was nothing he could have done that would have changed how this had worked out.

But I didn't really mind staying close to him. Nor escaping the boisterous noise of the guild below.

And Mystogan was helpful in identifying Carla as an Exceed, exactly the same as Happy.

"If they're both native to Edolas, how did they get here?"

"The Exceed are a nation in their own right. No doubt, they had something to do with it. But it must have been after I left, since no Exceed would ever leave their city willingly."

"It couldn't have been willing. Happy at least was still an egg when Natsu and Lisanna found him." I focused on Carla's story briefly. "Carla was an egg too."

"That is curious then."

The party seemed to be winding down on the first story, and I had kept a mental ear out in case Wendy got overwhelmed. But she seemed to have taken to the madness of her welcome like a duck to water. On the other hand, Carla had taken to us like a mildly annoyed swan to a lake crisscrossed by speeding boats. I had spent a few hours talking to Mystogan, so...

"I'm gonna go get food, and send Wendy up." I informed him. I had a feeling that this conversation was most suited to privacy. He had been Wendy's big brother after all. She had called him that and everything. (It was adorable. Li'l Wendy was so stinking cute!)

Mystogan sighed.

"I wasn't going to avoid her, Fae."

"I know. But she's currently trying to get out of a conversation with Max and Droy about the unique plants she's grown up around."

"Trying?"

"She's too polite to just leave, and they're asking her a lot of questions."

"I see."

Wendy gratefully took the escape I offered her, and soon disappeared up the stairs. I then proceeded to not look at either her, or Mystogan's stories until I saw them in person.

Natsu had passed out on the bar, Lucy was trying to move him with mixed success. The Nalu ship was giggling in the back of my mind. I could almost see G2 in my minds eye giving it an incredulous look.

 _Wait, that isn't coming from you?_

 _ **Negative**_.

... _That is slightly concerning._

Changing the subject immediately, why wasn't Juvia fawning over Gray? (Who had lost his shirt at some point. As expected.)

"Accio Gray's shirt." I mumbled.

Four different articles flew at me from various points around the guild hall. I gave them an incredulous look. He can't have lost all of these today...Can he?

But it also broke the question. Why hadn't Juvia collected them?

As it turned out, Mira had the answer as I collected some dinner from her.

"She was so upset that she couldn't go along with you that she took a job out of town to distract herself."

"You mean that she couldn't go with Gray."

"I meant what I said." The She-devil said lightly as she leaned on the bar, taking a break from clean up for a moment. I started to draw a simple Animation rune to make the rag and soap start to wash the dishes by themselves as I ate, just so I wouldn't feel useless.

Mira's hand reached out and grabbed mine as I worked. She turned my hand up to examine the orange circle that was resting on my finger tip. She gave me a knowing smile before letting go.

"Well, that's another good thing that came out of all this. A friend your own age, and progress in your magic." Cubellios lifted her head up to the bar and hissed inquiringly. I summoned a dish of water for her and she started to drink contentedly. Mira smiled at the cursed woman.

"Hopefully Fae can figure out how to transfer that translation spell to other people so we can all get to know you, Cubellios!" she tilted her head at Mira.

 **:I know she addressed me, but what did she say?:** I translated the message. The purple head of the snake snapped around and looked at me in shock.

 **:you could do that?:**

I scratched my chin.

 **:I don't see why not:** It was basically an enchantment at heart after all...

And Cubellios would be able to think of herself much more as a person if more people could talk to her in a way she could understand.

 _I'll work on that too_.

Since it would no doubt take a long time for me to break her curse completely, I would do this smaller task first to make the wait easier on her.

List of things to do in order of priority:

1: Make a transferable enchantment that enables Parseltongue in other people. You know, other than passing around a fragment of my soul.

2: Finish the Naruto headband. I need something that I can wear inconspicuously and constantly to avoid another fiasco like the Oracion Seis.

3: Start breaking down Cubellios' curse.

I was seated at my table as though I had never left it, and I was already tapping away at my rune syllabary to put together the enchantment for Cubellios.

I could do it almost instinctively for myself. I knew the story, so my magic "knew" what to do with the single word I was using to anchor the enchantment. But casting the spell externally on someone else who didn't know the story required a bit more detail in the runic base.

 _OK, so Salazar Slytherin is the most infamous Parseltongue speaker, so his story would be a good base. But Slytherin was also reportedly...not a nice person. Let's see if we can't change that...With a question: how did people first start speaking Parseltongue and what differentiates snakes from other creatures in having their own language?_

So I set to work scribbling out ideas for how to create a story to fit the enchantment.

I would have stayed absorbed in that after the breakfast rush but Wendy's arrival drew my eye. It got everyone's attention actually since her skill set was incredibly useful in the monster control and combat jobs that most of the guild members specialized in. Watching from a distance as Wendy hovered near the job board, I got the impression she was starting to get a little overwhelmed at the surge of people willing to go with her.

Being ghosts, Cait Shelter typically couldn't send much by way of help on her jobs.

"Give her some room to breathe." Mira said by way of scolding for the other guild members, stepping forward and putting a gentle hand on Wendy's shoulder. "It's only her first day, and there will be plenty of chances for you to work with her." Wendy swallowed nervously and looked around, her voice soft and hesitant, I didn't hear what she said until Carla tapped her side and gave her a firm look. Wendy straightened and cleared her throat.

"Actually...I was wondering if Fae wanted to go do a job with me." I blinked in surprise as several people turned to look at me.

"Fae?"

"If that's alright." Wendy said hurriedly. "I know she's not a member yet, but-"

"I've done some jobs before, don't worry about it." I scratched my cheek though. "I've done foraging jobs with Mystogan and the identification part of curse breaking with Shadowgear. What kind of job did you have in mind?" The Sky Dragon Slayer shifted.

"I don't know. I've never done jobs with anyone else before, so I figured doing one of the ones you usually did would be something I could handle."

 _ **But mostly she wants to work with you.**_ G2 commented.

I looked over my notes, Cubellios lifted her head from the bench I had enchanted to warm her and regarded me.

 **:The wyrmling wishes to do something?:**

 **:She wants to go complete a job with me:**

The snake considered this, her bulk taking up the entirety of the bench.

 **:If you wish to go, I will accompany you. You have been sitting here working at your magic all morning. It would be good to move yourself:**

With her opinion given, there was nothing else to really do but pack up and go investigate the job board with Wendy!

-vVv-

"Why did it have to be this?" Wendy said with a sigh, gazing up the tree's large trunk.

The job request was retrieving some feathers from a certain species of bird. There was a crafting guild that made fans that provided super cooled air, popular with tourists during the summer months. They used the feathers of a bird that migrated up from the south during the winter months. And those birds typically nested in very tall trees near the ocean close to Magnolia. Winter time was when they restocked for the following year.

"It's usually hit and miss what they have us gather. But this is a seasonal request." I looked up at the tree with my hands on my hips.

"I hate heights..." Wendy shivered, looking up at the uppermost branches where the hastily built nests were. The bare branches made it easy to spot all of them.

"We'll be right there beside you. All of us can fly in one way or another, we won't let you fall." Wendy looked at me with some bemusement.

"I know you can fly, but-" Cubellios flexed her back and showed her wings, coiling her body beneath her in anticipation for flight. "-oh."

"You'll be perfectly safe with her. She doesn't have to swoop around to stay airborne-" Somehow. "So you can hold onto whatever we collect."

I was purposely making it sound simple, Wendy's ashen face was somewhat worrisome.

"We'll be right there beside you the whole time, child." Carla assured her, her wings already flashing into existence. I tapped one stud on my bracer which I had preset with 'flight' and pushed the requisite amount of magic into it. Tying runes down was much easier with a magic circle to use as an outline...

The Sky Dragon Slayer still wasn't moving. Alright, time for plan C for contact.

"Alright, Cubellios." I grabbed Wendy and balanced on the snake's back. "Take us up!"

"Wait-!" But Cubellios had already pushed off of the ground and shot upwards. Flying as a passenger on her back was distinctly different from flying on my own. It was actually rather difficult, and if Wendy had been alone, she would probably have fallen off. But since I had my wings out, and was holding onto her, I kept her balanced as we reached the bare, uppermost branches. Carla was already inspecting the closely woven branches for a route to the closest nest.

Wendy latched onto the nearest stable object, me, and closed her eyes. She was trembling and shaking-

Alright, now for a little nostalgia.

I couldn't recreate Grandeeney, but I could reach back into Wendy's past and recall how secure she had felt in the sky with her foster mother. The warmth emitting from her feathers had kept back any chill, and the assurance of not being alone in the heavens had made the fear of falling negligible.

"Wendy, think back and remember..."

"But-!"

"Wendy, were you ever afraid with Grandeeney when she took you flying?" This stopped Wendy's protests in her tracks and an eye cracked open to look at me. "You're having trouble holding onto those memories because you're automatically afraid of them. You remember healing and medicine best because you were on the ground for those. But the rest of her magic? You were taught that in the sky, she was sharing her element with you and took you to be as close to it as possible." I patted her hands and gently removed them from clutching me, lifting off gently as Cubellios hovered by the tree, head turned to watch us.

"We won't go higher than this. But I promised you I'd help you refresh your memories of Grandeeney, and that means we'll need to work on your fear of heights if you want those memories to stay fresh." Carla returned with a pawful of pale feathers, whole and unbroken.

"We'll work on it together, Wendy."

When I was certain Wendy wouldn't shake herself off of Cubellios' back out of nerves, I started venturing to other trees to find more feathers. There was no upper limit on how many we were supposed to gather but not all were suited to our purposes.

We had worked through most of them in record time, all of us being airborne and better able to reach sped the whole thing up immensely. Then G2 mused something quietly and I paused in my work.

 _Can you repeat that?_

 _ **A talking cat among the frogs.**_

 _...Huh?_

 _I've heard of 'cat among the pigeons' but that is a new one._ G2 wouldn't have brought it up if it weren't interesting, so I delivered the last of my feathers to Wendy and drifted to the ground to investigate.

 **:what do you hunt?:** Cubellios asked, gliding down gently out of consideration for her passenger. She could probably tell by some shift in body language that I was looking for something.

 **:a cat:** I answered, heading towards the water. That was the most likely place I would find frogs after all.

"Fae?"

"I heard something, I wanna check it out. We're not due back until evening anyway."

"I say..." Carla lifted her head and sniffed. "I don't know this smell...it isn't the tomcat."

"He has a name you know..." My comment went unheard as Carla took the lead with the rest of us falling in behind her.

"So we're looking for another talking cat like Happy and Carla?"

"I guess. I heard he was 'among the frogs' so he ought to be somewhere around here."

Cubellios went still and suddenly leaned forward, her tongue tasting the air.

 **:I hear crying:**

I relayed her words to the others as Cubellios slid over the browning grass. We all followed her to the water's edge where she was nosing around a green cat who was crying his heart out. A green kitten rather, he was about half Carla's size.

"Oh no, what's wrong?" Wendy moved forward first, kneeling by his side and gently touching his back. Big watery eyes looked up at her and then me.

"They're...they're gone."

"Oh kit." Carla wrapped her wings and arms around the smaller animal and drew him close, letting him cry onto her dress. "Just let it out..."

 _Ok...Who's gone?_ I appealed to G2 and got an answer as I moved closer.

Apparently unlike Happy and Carla who had been found by Natsu and Wendy, this cat's egg had been found by a group of Singing Frogs, a semi-intelligent species of amphibians who were known for their perfect multi-part harmonies and their mimicry of the human voice. This cat had been raised by them.

"What's your name?" I asked as Cubellios coiled around us all in a loose circle, the warming charm I had cast on her surrounding us and warding off the cold.

"Frosch is called Frosch..." The cat said, fresh tears still rolling down his face. "Frosch's family is gone..." I touched the water close by...then I smiled at the upset kitten still being nuzzled rather adorably by a surprisingly maternal Carla.

"Actually, Frosch, they're not." His eyes fastened on me, lighting with hope.

"Not?" I half listened to the way G2 was describing the story and tried to phrase it in the same words.

"Didn't they sing about a long sleep when the cold comes? They're only asleep until spring time when the water is warm enough for them and their food to survive."

Wendy looked deeply confused. "Fae, cat's don't hibernate." I gave Wendy a sheepish look.

"Would you believe I'm still not used to the realization that only I can hear what my magic tells me? When Frosch is talking about his family, Wendy, he's talking about the frogs that raised him."

"Frosch is frog." The kitten said firmly, making Carla look at him in surprise. He looked at Carla and smiled, his tears seemingly forgotten. "White frog?" He asked, touching her cheek.

"Goodness me, he doesn't even know what he is." Carla remarked, stroking his ears gently.

"Well he knows what he looks like. And all he knows to call himself is a frog. He just doesn't realize there is more to him." Wendy remarked, tickling the green kitten under the chin. "You are so cute..." She cooed.

Frosch gave an odd stuttering sound like the world's tiniest engine that died before it really started up. Carla let out a huff. An affronted huff, rather than a genuinely offended one.

"You don't even know how to purr. Honestly!" She looked up at us with a determined glint in her eye. "I cannot let this go uncorrected. The little one may think of himself as a frog, and he may do so. But he is still physically a cat and he will know what that means!" I stroked Frosch's back, and found his fur remarkably thick and oily. His magic may have been Aera originally, but he seemed to have shifted over to Aqua in order to adapt to his lifestyle better. Water resistant fur at least, but I'd bet if I took a closer look, he'd have webbing between his toes and fingers.

 _Fascinating...I wonder if he can create extra fins or something the same way Aera makes wings..._

Getting the whole story took a bit of effort. Singing Frogs could reproduce any number of sounds, but details like grammar and syntax tended to get lost. But between the three of us asking the right questions and my being able to verify and explain what he actually meant, we learned what had led to Frosch believing his family gone.

Frosch had gone out to visit a friend a day or so earlier. He had gotten lost trying to come back, and had wandered for several days before finding the pond again. By the time he got there, the frogs had already settled into hibernation, leaving him alone.

We assured Frosch again that his family would wake up fine next spring when the weather started to warm up again. And then we helped him understand that he couldn't hibernate with them. The little sweetheart believed us without reservation. Frosch and Carla rode on Cubellios' head and conversed the whole way while we went to deliver our findings.

"It's not something in the breath, little one. Reach deeper."

"Is purring really that important?" I asked Carla as Frosch valiantly tried again.

"For us it is. Purring allows our magic to resonate within us and into our surroundings. It stimulates growth and proper development and also makes using magic much easier. As long as he does not know how, he will remain undersized, weak and scarcely able to access his true potential." _Huh...I'll have to mention that to Happy later..._

 _Wait._

Happy was normally...well...happy. According to what I knew, he had almost been nicknamed Magicmotor for how much he had purred as a kitten. He was just so content with his life that it had been a nearly constant thing...And even now he purred whenever he was eating, or spending good time with friends, a nice party, falling asleep...

 _Maybe he's already got the magical benefits...I mean, he's stronger than most normal people!_

Since Carla was still absorbed in helping Frosch, Wendy and I decided to talk some things out while we waited for our payment. Such as what would happen with Frosch now that his family was no longer available.

"I don't see why he couldn't just come home with one of us. He's a sweetie, and he doesn't take up much room." We sat on a bench outside Magnolia's Craft Hall. Cubellios had a resigned expression on her face as she tolerated the two cat's who were still sitting on her head.

"Well...I think sending him to someone he already knows would be better for him. He mentioned a friend that he was visiting. Maybe they can take care of him. If he left his family to see them, he must like and trust them."

"Huh...Maybe."I looked at the small green feline. "Frosch, what's your friend's name? The one you were visiting earlier."

This made the little creature beam.

"Rogue!"

 _ **Ryos.**_

I waved off the additional random information with a shake of my head.

"Perfect! If I have his name, I can find him." Would he be good to Frosch though? That was a concern of mine...I'd just met the kitten, but I loved him already. _Must be the Baby Effect. If it's small and cute, there is a natural inclination to protect and love. May also cause snuggles._

I wasn't getting any warnings about the idea of sending Frosch to live with Rogue, so...

"That's great, Fae!"

"Frosch thinks so too!"

It turns out, finding Rogue was a lot easier than we anticipated. He was actually really close by, calling for Frosch near the woods we had originally found him in.

"Rogue!" Frosch bounced on Cubellios's head, waving his paws eagerly. "Rogue! I'm here!"

Rogue was a dark haired boy near my and Wendy's age, his hair was a mess but he had an air of cautious reserve and his guard went up upon seeing us. What's his problem?

"So you're who Frosch has been telling us about." I said in a cheerful tone, determined to defuse the tension the boy seemed to be carrying with it. "He has something he's very excited to show you." Frosch leapt down from Cubellios's head and raced to the boy who visibly warmed as he approached.

"Rogue, Rogue, listen to what Miss Carla taught me!" He then let out a shaky, but audible and recognizable purr. Said white cat looked extremely pleased with herself.

"He may think of himself as a frog all he wishes, but he must purr if his magic is to develop properly." I could almost see Rogue's icy emotional wall melt as he held the purring kitten close to him and Frosch gave him a hug. Heck, I was pretty much melting at the sheer adorableness of the sight and Wendy was no better.

"...Thank you for looking after him." Rogue said, sheepishly meeting our gaze. "He gets lost really easily, and he's so innocent I'm always worried someone might take advantage of him."

"It was our pleasure!" Wendy approached, hand outstretched. "I'm Wendy, it's nice to meet someone who Frosch thinks so highly of."

"I'm Fae, and ditto!" The dark haired boy shook each of our hands. And I was promptly washed in a new surge of information.

 _ **Shadow Dragon Slayer.**_

 _I refer to my previous thought: Are they just falling out of the sky now? Cause not even three months ago, I only knew two. And now I've met five more of them!_

 _-_ vVv _-_

We chatted for a little bit as we walked into town together, three kids, two cats and a very big snake. People looked at us pretty oddly... But even with all that, someone I didn't recognize happily hailed me by name and asked where I had been for Story Night.

"I was in Fiore!" I called back completely truthfully and in a deliberately cheeky tone. I had missed Story Night due to being kidnapped, but I didn't want to go into that when we'd been having such a nice discussion.

"Well that's not too specific at all!" He called back while his companions laughed.

"A lot of people have talked about that. It sounds like a lot of fun!" Wendy said, her face lighting with energy.

"Maybe for them, for me it's just a lot of people staring at me for a few hours."

"I've never been..." Rogue admitted, scratching Frosch's ears, who was still contentedly cuddling and purring.

"Well consider yourself invited!" I declared. "You and Frosch! I can even retell the Frog Princess for certain people." This made Frosch's purr get a little louder for a few seconds and Rogue show a flicker of a smile.

"Would...Gajeel be there?"

G2 showed me a something that made me coo on the inside.

A younger Rogue struggling against several older boys and a severely ticked off, also younger, Gajeel making them all run for the hills with a single glare and growl.

 _He's a fan of Gajeel!_

"He might be! He's not as into it as others, but I can definitely ask him."

"I don't know him yet, but he seems to be...very intense."

"Frosch thinks so too!"

-vVv-

"Young ladies, do you have any idea what time it is?" Erza asked, hands on hips as Wendy and I came back to Fairy Hills. Erza was already in her PJ's and she was right, it was rather late.

"Way past dark, heat and reason?" I asked, yawning, but flashing a grin. "But totally worth it!"

"We met some people on the way back from our job." Wendy said in apologetic tone. "They were really nice and we just...lost track of time." Erza's eyes flashed.

"People...?"

"A cute little kitten who thinks he's a frog and a boy about our age named Rogue who's secretly a fan of Gajeel." I reported. Erza's scary face faded.

"Oh."

"Fae invited them to Story Night."

"Oh really?" There was a different sort of gleam in Erza's eye now. I instantly sent as many mental apologies to Rogue as I could and gave a half hearted glare in Wendy's direction.

 _Wendy, I love you girl, but you really have to work on not telling absolutely everything. Take it from me: sometimes, everyone's happier with just part of the story._

-vVv-

I was going over my notes for the evening ahead. Just a basic outline or story points and concept art for the images. Other notes were about the spell I needed to read Cubellios's curse. And most importantly: some counter strategies to keep Rogue from getting picked on by my overprotective guildmates.

So absorbed was I in my work and preparations, I was caught off guard when Bickslow marched up to up and bodily picked me up.

"Come on, kid! I've put up with the moping for long enough!"

"What?" I didn't fight his grip, persay, just tried to crane around to look at him. "But I haven't been-"

"Yeah you've pretty much gotten over it. But Freed hasn't." Bickslow marched me down to the storage cellar and tossed me inside the door. Evergreen was standing there with a stone statue of Freed-

Or rather, Freed's petrified form.

"You both get to come out when he's fixed." She informed me, adjusting her glasses as she stalked to the door. It closed behind her, and I saw it flash into stone, trapping us inside. At the same time, I also felt Freed turn back into his normal self.

"Faerun...What is happening?"

"Something I did not plan for when I woke up this morning."


	30. Mending

_Ok, the ideal situation would be to unpetrify the door. Reversal from stone is achieved through the use of an item known as a Soft..._

 _Aaaand I am trying to avoid this conversation even though we are literally locked in here together. A conversation that by my own admission needs to happen._

I finally looked back at Freed, who expression was a cross between awkward discomfort and shame.

"...I really hoped one of us would work up the nerve to start this conversation instead of relying on outside forces." I admitted.

"You mean that I would start it. You made it clear that it was my responsibility." The words had an undercurrent of bitterness to them, though whether they were directed at me or at himself I couldn't tell.

"Which was unfair of me." I tapped on the stone door leading outside to the rest of the guild.

 _Evergreen seriously used a_ _full blown Cockatrice Stare on the door?_

I could undo it, given time, but...this did have to happen. And at least this way, we wouldn't get interrupted. I turned back towards Freed, a sick, swooping sensation in my stomach. _Into the emotional storm we go._

"They all forgave you within the same day. I could even forgive Laxus and it was his idea in the first place! But not you." It hurt a little bit that he didn't even flinch at my saying that. I had distanced myself from him, and he had done the same to me it seemed.

"What I did was a far more personal betrayal." Freed said, leaning against one of the barrels. "You asked me why. Why I would even consider going along with this. And it took me some time to even realize what reason I held to." Freed's gaze was dark and regretful as he looked at me and I wanted to look away, or tell him to look away.

"My initial motivation stems from...my devotion to Laxus." He said in a deliberately careful tone. "My family does not look favorably on my magic, less so when my curse came about. Laxus was the first person to look past Dark Ecriture and what it does to me. He was my connection to some place where I belonged, even just a little."

"If Fairy Tail is a place for you to belong, why try and change it?" I couldn't hold back the question. "Were we not good enough?"

"No!" The denial was flat, short and sharp, and Freed's head came up. "Fae, you were more than I could ever have hoped for." His tone went soft and warm. "I was not impressed with master's initial request to teach you. I thought you would...act your age, frankly. I thought you would be naive, and simple minded. You proved that wrong very quickly." _Ok, we're talking. That's...that's good._

It spoke a lot for how much I loved Freed that even after some months of being estranged I still felt a surge of pride at his words.

I moved closer, springing onto another barrel across from him and just listening.

"I knew you didn't like me." The admission came candidly, but the afterthought just slipped out between my teeth. "But every time I riled you up was 100% deliberate."

"I knew that, I just didn't mind."

 _ **It was something he looked forward to.**_

The soft nostalgic feelings hung in the air for a moment before Freed kept talking, his face falling from almost happiness back to regret.

"I could barely wait to see you again when I was away. Seeing how far you had progressed in our time apart was the highlight of coming home. You were growing faster than I had ever expected, and I was so proud of you, and everything you managed to accomplish in such a short time." He hesitated for a second... "I still am."

 _Ok. Ouch._

I definitely felt a deeper than normal stab of guilt for my giving him the cold shoulder now. Freed had been someone who took the door of my magic and helped me open it. Helped me organize my magic into a useable form. He gave me wings... As proud as he was of me, I had been just as fulfilled when I earned his praise.

"I worried about you, whether I was helping you as much as I could. You were already isolated from children your age with you intellect, and your power made the gap grow wider still. That worry eventually grew into a fear that the guild wasn't the best way for you to grow up. And you were in danger so many times. First Phantom Lord, and then with the Tower. Times when you should have been safe but weren't for some reason. Those and Laxus's encouragement were enough to convince me that you deserved a better guild than what we had at present. One where all the members were strong-"

My hand, which had been resting neutrally on the lip the barrel I was sitting on, tightened. Hearing him say that made a sullen ember of anger flare to life in my chest again, something I thought, and hoped, had blown itself out to ashes weeks ago.

Freed had used me essentially as an excuse to try and destroy Fairy Tail. Not in the direct sense. The name wouldn't have changed, but everything else would have. Everything that I had drawn on to make myself into the person I was-!

 _ **Whoever you let anger you is able to control you.**_

The gentle reminder from G2 made the breath leave my lungs in a deep exhale, taking the worst of my bitterness with it. I would still get angry, but I would not hand someone the reins to how I felt.

 _Feel it, acknowledge it, and then let it go before it burns you even worse._

"Faerun-" I looked at the older Rune Wizard who gave a dry smile. "You were emitting an angry aura. Red light, moving erratically and violently." I let out a huff. _Darn magic..._

"That only seems to happen around you..." I forced the emotional signal to dissipate as I gathered my thoughts.

"The Tower of Heaven. I was in terrible danger then, even if I wasn't helpless. I only survived because of my friends...Friends who wouldn't have been part of the new Fairy Tail. Even if they did make the power cut, they would never have accepted Laxus as guild master. Not after a coup like what you pulled. You'd have driven them all out...And I would have had to stay." I felt an angry stinging sensation in my eyes. "You'd have made me be alone again...Have made me stay with people I couldn't trust anymore..." My glare felt venomous and I closed my eyes to keep it from stabbing through Freed. All the fury I had bottled up over the last few weeks had been pressurized by Brain and now I was releasing the pressure.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect you to be furious with me." He folded his arms, the sleeves of his coat rustling, his recently cropped hair making him look oddly naked and vulnerable. Actually, everything about him screamed vulnerable. His shoulders were slumped, eyes downcast. He looked like the picture of dejection and hopelessness.

 _Freed...Sensei...No. No, you never look like that..._

"Oh I am. But probably not for the reason you think." I had told Makarov and Erza the bare bones of what Zero had done to me, the technical details of how he had been able to pull it off. But I hadn't told them the full story, or gone into the emotional nuances of the helpless feeling of watching your body move, but feeling someone else drive it.

"I was kidnapped by Grey Chimera for a specific reason Freed...They were working for a dark wizard who had a hand in my early life. The reason why Natsu found me alone and hurt near Bosco. He killed my birth family when I was two, and-" Tears pricked my eyes and I swallowed, taking a steadying breath.

"I was an experiment. For the next five years I didn't have a name. I didn't have a single thought that I wasn't told to have. I could have been starving and had food placed in my mouth. But I wouldn't have been able to even think about swallowing it unless someone gave permission first. My world was doing as I was told. Being obedient was the right thing to do. It wouldn't hurt if I followed orders. There were people who had my command phrase and _things_ that didn't. Nothing else mattered..."

Freed looked like he wanted to say something, but was biting his tongue and letting me talk. I tried not to look at him. He looked like he wanted to cry as much as I did right then. My gaze held his, I couldn't have broken eye contact with him if I had tried. I just...wanted him to understand.

"Something, somehow, woke up in me, and I realized how...wrong everything was. What I had been doing. I had trusted the wrong people, they had used me to hurt others." The uncomfortable parallels hovered before my eyes. Freed and my captors. I had listened to and trusted both blindly. And people had been hurt because of it.

"I ran away...Just turned my back when they were busy and ran as far and fast as I could. They didn't even have anyone watching me in case I bolted. They just assumed I would do what I was told. Like they had trained me to do... Natsu found me out in the woods after I got hurt and had to stop running. He promised to help." Thinking back to that feeling, the terror of being discovered and the blind animal terror of uncertainty that gripped my throat, rendering me mute.

 _Somedays, I wish I didn't have this clear of a memory._ It was like I was living it all again.

"I had never been around anyone who hadn't tried to hurt me in some way, so I couldn't believe him. I was so scared I would just be deceived again..." _And when I found you did that to me, I freaked out. I hated you as much as I loved you. Because, even without my memory, I could remember that lies and deception only bring pain._

"That's how I accessed my magic consciously...The first time I used it was to tell whether Natsu was telling the truth. If he would actually help me..." He had smelt like smoke, and his magic had caressed my senses like a campfire's flame. Reassuring, warm and a little ticklish. Home. Safety. Keeping the darkness of my past at bay.

"I didn't want to be a scared girl anymore. I didn't want to be a tool with only a number to define its existence. So I unconsciously hid my own story. Split it off and made a completely new identity so I couldn't trace my own history and remember how much it had hurt." I managed to tear my eyes away now, my hands rubbing unconsciously across the bracers on my arms. One of the first things I had acquired under Freed's tutelage.

"Whatever I have in life that is worth something I have because of Fairy Tail. This Fairy Tail." The tears did fall now, bringing a soothing relief to my eyes over the painful itch that had plagued it before. Suppressing anger now being let out in remembered relief.

"The Fairy Tail you wanted so badly to change for my sake, is the Fairy Tail that gave me an identity as something more than a puppet. That made me want to be alive. That's what it felt like you were attacking, Freed. Not just my friends and my family, you were attacking me! You were saying that it wasn't alright for Fae to be happy and that G2.0 had to keep living when I didn't want to!"

And now Freed was crying too. He was one of the unfair jackasses who looked decent while crying, only getting a faint bit of redness around the eyes instead of me, whose face got blotchy.

"I didn't know..." Three words had never sounded so much like years worth of apologies and pleading for forgiveness.

"Neither did I... Until I was kidnapped, I didn't even know why I was so mad at you specifically." _I didn't realize it until Brain made me jog my own memory._

My chest was quivering with the effort of containing sobs. Thinking back to who I had been when I had been G2, and the brief recall of that as my identity, was jarring and terrifying. The sensation of being utterly helpless and despondent. Of watching horror, and being unable to even cry.

It only occured to me that it was stupid for both of us to sit across from each other and cry when Freed managed to choke out some words.

"I cannot...ever ask for your forgiveness..." He would feel like that. Freed would never be able to forgive himself completely. Not after the perspective that his actions wouldn't just have deprived me of my family, but quite possibly of my will to live as well.

I wiped tears off my face, the wet lines tingling in the cool air of the wine cellar. I hopped down from my perch and moved to stand right in front of the crying teenager. And he was still a teenager, though I had previously viewed him as an adult authority figure. Freed pulled away from me, new tears still forcing their way out.

I deliberately reached out and curled my fingers around his hand.

 _No more running away._ I had given him full disclosure. Everything he needed in order to understand me. The emotions running through me were mirrored in Freed.

 _ **Guilt. Grief. Loneliness. Pain. Guilt. Desperation. Frustration. Helplessness. Guilt.**_ G2 identified the emotions as she read them. And then she went deeper.

Having the talent that I did in viewing the past so clearly and so personally was a double edged sword. It made acquiring knowledge easy, but also meant bringing on a slew of vicarious emotional baggage. That had been the bane of my learning how to look at something and how to ignore it. I never knew what I would see and it was like I gambled my next night's rest on shaking someone's hand, or on brushing by them trailing after Mira for grocery shopping. With strangers, I could avoid it. But with my friends, there was already enough pain in their pasts to more than make up for my caution with others. Loke's long, long history of being seen as little more than a shiny, decorative tool hanging from someone's belt. How Erza had suffered in physical and emotional slavery, blackmailed into silence as her friends were trapped in hell. The crippling loneliness of Lucy's childhood after her mother had died, taking her father's joy with her. Natsu's feelings of abandonment after Igneel's disappearance. Gray's anger at the world after Deliora attacked...

But Freed, I had never looked at. I'd always been focused entirely on the present with him, so I never saw what he had gone through prior to being found by Laxus and being brought to Fairy Tail.

Not until now.

My first look in Freed's past produced a neutral enough image.

 _ **A well-off family with a few children. A younger son, bright and eager but easily overshadowed by the eldest.**_

The name of Freed's brother was Eion. Eion was several years older than Freed, maybe five or six. Enough that they had never really bonded as children.

I saw the images flash by as I continued to hold his hand.

I had never looked at Freed's past because I liked being the same as him. I wanted to be like him. And if he had a past, then I we wouldn't match anymore. Our coloring was similar, our magics ran in the same vein, we shared so much common ground...

I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want to lose this sense of equality and belonging I had found in Freed, not just in Fairy Tail.

But I looked now. And I shared the story with him, pulling him back through his own memories so he could see what I was looking at.

 _ **Struggling to be seen by everyone around him. Competing constantly against older siblings for attention and affection.**_

It was heartbreakingly similar to Lucy's past, only without as much money. The Justine family did their best to socially climb whenever they got the chance, and the pressure was on to fit into the high class crowd they wanted to live in. Especially on the kids.

Unease prickled the skin on the back of my neck.

"Freed...?" _Am I going to need to watch you get hurt?_

"Just watch, Fae..." His hand had curled loosely around mine, accepting and resigned at the same time.

 _ **Discovering magic thanks to the taunting of older boys, one of which looked a lot like Freed.**_ He had finally seen a measure of approval and genuine affection from his parents. His father took the news with eagerness and great paternal pride, giving Freed access to all the family texts collected from their ancestors who had been wizards. His mother was cooler, more calculating and...hard. There was no other way to describe what I saw in that woman's gaze. It wasn't malice, but it was a certain detached apathy. Freed was an asset, not a son. If he couldn't contribute to the survival and progress of their family, he wasn't worth noticing. But that didn't change the joy he felt at being acknowledged. Of being seen as valuable if only for this one thing.

 _I didn't realize your life was so much of a battle..._

I kept watching.

 _ **Jealousy spurred his brother into pushing for something new, something better to regain his status as the favored child.**_ Finding his own talent in runes. He lacked the patience Freed had to flourish in the art, but it didn't seem to matter. He had magic and wanted their relationship to return to the way it had been before. With him as the priority. He tried to push Freed aside again, this time even more harshly. I watched as Eion demanded to be given the family texts that Freed had been gifted.

His father disagreed. Freed was the magical heir, the first born into his power. In this, he was older than his brother and the books would be his.

 _ **A rift in the family. The mother and brother turning on Freed as a supplanter.**_ Freed being marked as a promising wizard soon took precedence over Eion, the heir. But the boy didn't seem to notice the attention, immersing himself in his studies with enthusiasm. He was used to being the underdog and unnoticed, so much of the attention from their friends and the inhabitants of their community went over his head.

 _ **Several older boys, including Eion, gathering...**_

I watched as Freed tried to avoid the conflict. He even set up a barrier that kept hostile spells from passing through. Eion charged, slamming into the barrier, halted physically but something still passed through like a ghost. A tiny working of magic, so ameteur and paltry to be practically unnoticeable.

A young curse. Freed's enchantment was proof against spells, hexes and other workings, but he had no idea what a true curse was. And as with most curses, it had a certain awareness of it's caster and it's target. Born of Eion's raging jealousy and desire for power, the curse had the same desires. And it saw Freed, younger, stronger in magic but emotionally vulnerable, as the better host.

 _ **They could have found a way to reverse it, if they had known it was there.**_

The fledgling curse went unnoticed and uncontained for years. The pressure and negative attention from people who should have loved him made it stronger all without Freed noticing the danger. He was strong and bore the hatred from his mother and Eion. And eventually their attention lessened into a reluctant truce. Freed seemed to have won the war by all accounts.

He relaxed his attention. Dropped his guard internally.

Then Dark Ecriture made itself known. The harmless, controlled spells Freed had been able to produce so easily before were now stronger, more violent and less predictable. The first time he used his changed power, he merely intended to light a fire to get warm.

Instead he caused a small scale wildfire.

 _ **The increase in strength changed his brother and mother's stance from grudging acceptance to outright fear.**_

When Freed's father had fallen ill and was declared unfit to lead the family, Freed was banished on account of his magic being too powerful. He was a threat to his father's delicate health.

 _ **The weak cannot survive being near the strong. So they will always cast the strong out.**_

That was the lesson he subconsciously learned.

He fit with Laxus, belonged with him because he was strong. He fit with the Thunder Legion because they were capable in ways he was not. But Laxus's views of the rest of the guild as either weak wizards or weak hearted made him believe that he would not belong among them unless they changed. Unless they became stronger.

 _ **And then came you.**_

He had initially dismissed me. But then I proved him wrong. Proved we were similar in many aspects. I was still struggling to define myself, as he had been. And he was assigned to me as a teacher...So he deliberately molded himself into the kind of guardian and teacher he wished he had had when he was younger. Someone who gave praise, attention and affection. Someone who was there and who always made time for me. My positive response to the affection starved wizard had made him latch onto me in more ways than either of us thought would happen.

Freed saw himself in me. Saw my potential...And thus he decided that to make Fairy Tail someplace I would never be forced out of. That his history would never become my future.

Like I had known weeks ago, holding Freed's hand, reading what he showed me, did let me understand intimately why he had done what he had. I squeezed his hand, drawing myself out of the past for a second...then going back in, but this time...

" _Show him how Celeste D Faerun came to be."_

 _An eye for an eye. I get a look into what made him like this, and he gets a look at my history too._

Freed was torn in a strange place of mixed emotions all showing on his face. There was outrage and anger, I expected that, Freed was a decent person and injustice made his blood boil. There was sadness on my behalf. And there was...relief?

 _That's a little odd._

"You look...weirdly happy?"

"It's foolish and selfish..."

"But still relevant." Freed didn't manage to meet my eyes.

"While...that...isn't something I would wish on even my worst enemy...It did make it so you came to Fairy Tail."

 _ **So you came into his life.**_

"-Without that, you'd never have left that village, and probably would never have discovered your magic." That was true. And while I did feel some regret and curiosity over my birth family, I had to agree with Freed.

I wouldn't change where I was now for the world. I had no desire to go through all of that again, but life was good right now.

"It's ok to be happy for the good parts of life. I'm glad for them too." I then managed to smile up at Freed, pulling out a handkerchief that he always carried in his pocket and wiping away lingering tears on both our faces. We sat in an understanding silence for a moment before I spoke, squeezing his hand.

"I forgive you Freed."

"Fae you don't need-" I put my free hand over his mouth.

"Yes I do. It hasn't done either of us any good. It's only hurt us both. And I can't keep being distant from you and still be honest with myself."

"What do you mean?" I glanced up at him.

"What kind of person would develop a genuine liking to her captors and under what circumstances?"

"That's normally a sign of extreme emotional manipulation, deliberately encouraged over a long period of time."

"It took me less than an hour to consider one of the Oracion Seis enough of a friend to go out of my way to help someone he loved. He was literally my jailer, and I would still call him my friend. After a few hours of amiable talk and despite the attempted mind control by his boss." Freed looked more than a little concerned at this. _Papa Wolf Freed makes a comeback..._

"All that, and I don't have any ill will towards him whatsoever. Almost a complete stranger." I poked his face, grinning as he gave me a half hearted glare at the annoyance. "Seems kinda dumb of me to hold a grudge against you."

 _You've done much more for me than you have against me._

I had seen Freed smile before. But it had never felt quite this good to see that look on his face again.

"I'm still gonna be Mystogan's student, officially at least. But...can I come to you if I need help in curse breaking?" _Or something that he can't help me with?_

I was pulled into the fine long coat that Freed wore in a tight hug.

"You can come to me for anything. Fae...Anything at all."

 _This...this is nice._

He still smelt like clean laundry and lavender soap. And his hug still made me smile widely as I burrowed into him with a sigh of relief.

 _I missed this..._

"I'll hold you to that."

"You'd better."

-vVv-

We didn't have a lot longer in private in the cellar. The sound of rushing water made us both look around.

Liquid was seeping into the cellar through the cracks around the petrified door.

"What in the world...?"

 _ **Juvia is greeting Gray.**_

I snickered, informing Freed of the water's source.

"That woman...first she flooded the place when he left, and again now that he's back?"

"I guessed she really missed him. It must be hard to turn off the water works when you're a Water Woman."

I hopped down from my seat and approached the door, pressing my hands to the stone door.

 _Evergreen put up the spell but-_

A hand reached over and traced out a line of blocky purple text on the door. I heard Evergreen give a yelp on the other side of the door as her spell dissolved. I looked up at Freed who gave a tiny, dry smile.

"I improved on your method of dealing with them." I tilted my head and listened for what exactly he had done...

"You pre-place rune targets on your friends?"

"They normally are for supportive enchantments in combat, but they work just as well for other things too." He then opened the doors, sending a flood of water inside that drenched me up to the waist. "I think your performance tonight might be a little delayed."

"Maybe. Maybe not." _Ok, time to retry the Waterbender attunement with a Magic Circle._

I kept two bracer studs open as anchors for whatever I might need in a given situation. By doubling it up, I thought I might be able to collect all this water...

A fresh wave of water almost knocked me down. Freed steadied me as we slogged up the stairs against the current. Several people were being carried about by the waves of Juvia's ardent love. Gray among them.

"Gray, stop your crazy girlfriend man! We're dying here!"

"She's not my girlfriend!" And this of course made a whole new wave of tears gush out of Juvia's like a fire hose on full blast.

"Uh, Fae?" Wendy was perched on a table that was floating in the turbulent, small ocean that had formed inside the guild hall. Carla was hovering over it all, looked somewhat perturbed at the chaos she saw down below.

"It's ok Wendy! I'll introduce you to Juvia once she stops recreating the Great Flood!" I wanted to get out my syllabary and get started on damage control, but I was worried I'd drop it in the water. _Need higher ground._

A wave taller than my head surged towards me.

Freed moved quickly, pulling me up so my head would be above the water level, and turning so the worst of the impact broke on him instead of me.

"Juvia! We understand your enthusiasm at seeing Gray. But for pity's sake, please stop trying to wash us all out to sea!" He barked. I could see Cubellios on the upper story, wound around one of the railings. Mystogan was also there, watching with fond amusement.

 _ **It is his home too, for all that he isn't here that often.**_

"I-I can't help it!" Juvia sobbed.

"Ok, ok!" I finally got my slate out and managed to find my premade rune lays for waterbending. "Juvia! This might feel really weird but please don't resist!" The rising flood suddenly halted. Someone had opened the door.

"What in the world...!?" Erza was standing, the door held open as water rushed out around her. "What is going on here!?"

"Erza! Your Sea Sword would probably help right about now!"

Just having the door open significantly reduced the flood risk. Someone talked Juvia down from her relief and joy, out by the water's edge to minimize water damage, and the rest of us reset the guild hall for the evening's entertainment. Several people made jokes about being grateful to Juvia for her giving them a quick bath. She gave a shaky smile that gradually became more sincere as people showed they didn't hold her emotions taking control of her magic against her.

I introduced Freed to Cubellios, and he only took one look at her before recognizing her as a cursed woman.

"Woman?"

"With this feminine elegance? How could I see her as anything else?"

 _Well, you've already done better than Eric. He didn't even realize that she was a she. And they were together for ten years._

I continued to step across the still damp floor, moving in a fluid way.

 _Waterbending is almost like parkour: it never stops moving unless you want ice. And I_ _do not_ _want ice._

By the time I had worked my way across the guild hall and back, Freed had already written a list of potential patterns her curse could be modelled on. One of his eyes was shining dark violet as he examined Cubellios carefully, occasionally asking her to move this way or that.

"This is a true curse, given with malicious intent. And incredibly focused intent as well. Since she indicates that she cannot remember her time as a human, or her name, this could be from the Baleful class."

"Meaning that the original intent was to remove most of her human mind, literally turn her into an animal from the outside in." Cubellios would have felt her mind slipping away day by day. She was treated as a dumb animal day after day, and soon it woud have become easier to believe that she was one rather than deal with the emotional frustration.

"But these make me think it's not so simple." Freed poked at her back and she helpfully produced her wings. "Violet Dracne aren't supposed to have them, and Baleful Curses don't allow for any alterations whatsoever, wanted or not."

"Ok, well, whoever did curse her did a really thorough job. And it happened a long time ago, ten years. Baleful or Shame class curses would be able to last that long, but not allow her control over her body enough to spontaneously produce wings, or alter her size."

"No Baleful curse I've ever heard of would allow for the victim to become something of such size. The largest recorded transformation-"

"Turning someone into a wolverine. Not the brightest idea historically to turn an intelligent enemy into what amounts to a small bear...while they're less than five feet away from you." Cubellios hissed, shifting her coils as she turned towards the door, tongue flickering.

 **:The dark wyrmling is close, but uneasy about entering:**

 _ **He is also thinking about retreating before he's noticed.**_

 _Oh no you don't!_

I ran for the door, leaving a bemused Freed behind me. I whipped around the corner and tackled Rogue to the ground.

"Come on! You made it this far, don't go chickening out now!"

-vVv-

Freed had just mended ties with Fae. And yet it seemed as though nothing had changed in their months apart, except she was far more informed about curses and could apparently speak Snake. He was fascinated with Cubellios and her predicament. And he was also concerned there might be some reflective component in it that could endanger Fae. He hadn't seen anything malicious with Dark Ecriture, and it was uncanny in its abilities to discern threats...

Fae had come back then, and it was like no time had passed at all. They were casually trading ideas and theories, working together towards a mutual goal. It had made something pained and wilted inside him perk up with renewed joy.

Then she had abruptly broken off their conversation and run off, crashing into someone out of sight.

"Fae?" He called, half rising only to realize Cubellios had wound her thick tail around his torso and shoulders and was eyeing him with an amused expression. _I had no idea snakes could even make that face. Fascinating...Her curse form may be based off of a dracne, but it's far more expressive and malleable than any curse I've seen before..._

A ripple of sound through the crowd of regular patrons and guild members made Freed go motionless. The tone of the sudden whispers, and a few people abruptly turning and heading for the bar after throwing looks at him. He was sitting with his back to the door, and Cubellios was keeping him from turning, but if he just turned his head-

 _No..._

Faerun was standing in the center of attention holding a small green kitten in one hand...And the hand of a dark haired boy near her age in the other.

 _No...!_

"Everyone, these are my friends Rogue and Frosch!"

The boy slightly uncomfortable at the attention and unconsciously shifted closer to the familiar face. Closer to Fae.

Cubellios tightened her coils with what sounded suspiciously like a snicker as Freed tried to rise again and separate the two children.

 _Why hasn't she let go of his hand yet!? Why is no one reacting to this!_

He could hear Bixslow laughing like a maniac, and saw several people snickering at his helplessness.

"It's so good to meet the two of you!" Mirajane swept in, smiling like the angel she most definitely was not. "Welcome to Fairy Tail! As Fae's special guests, you get a front row seat to the show." She gestured them forward, and Fae tugged the boy along to the stage. She gave Freed a wave and a smile as they passed.

"We'll talk more later, Freed! It's time to get started!"

It was actually several minutes past time. But Juvia's little accident had set them back somewhat. Freed was more horrified at the realization that Fae had been waiting specifically for this boy to arrive...

 _No...no, not yet...!_

-vVv-

Cubellios turned her head to look at her hatchling's old tutor curiously. He did not look well, but he had been displaying the signs of sudden, unreasoned action. And her hatchling was so happy the wyrmling had joined them... So she had taken action to prevent him from interfering. The wyrmling needed a den, even just temporarily. And Hatchling certainly seemed to have a talent for bringing new people into her family. Better let their status as allies have time to solidify before her elders tried to frighten him.

Her eyes traced over the not-real images that Hatchling's voice and magic produced as she launched into her story, quickly captivating the minds and imaginations of everyone in the den. She let out a slow breath that would have been a content sigh in a human, and rested her head on the still motionless shoulder of Hatchling's former mentor. A small weight settled on her back and climbed to just behind her head. She smelt that the green kitten. A thin, happy purr started to vibrate through him.

"Frosch thinks it's pretty too." For some reason, although he spoke the human tongue, she had no issue understanding the small cat's speech clearly.

The white maned Demon Master approached, patting the green maned wizards's hand with a smile and began to speak in a soothing tone. While it wasn't making the tension leave his body, she could feel his unconscious efforts to get up were gradually weakening and finally stopping.

-vVv-

" _Betcha 10 grand Freed doesn't even make it an hour before he snaps."_

" _No bet, Mira's defusing him now, look."_

" _Damn...She must like the kid."_

" _More like she just wants to make sure no one tries to give him the shovel talk, because that means she would have to give all three kids 'The Talk'."_

 _"..."_

 _"..."_

 _"...Let's try to be on a job when that happens. Say, in Bosco."_


	31. Anima

"They've all got cats."

"Cobra didn't, and neither did Laxus."

"They're half Slayers. They got the power, but none of the instincts. All Dragon Slayers who were properly raised by a dragon have got cats. Why don't I got one too?" Gajeel's demand was somewhat petulant in tone.

 _I could mention Sting, since he doesn't have a cat, but I think that would cause more problems than it would solve, given everyone's reactions to hearing about Rogue._

He had come in late on the night Rogue and Frosch visited our guild, and I had happily towed the big Iron Slayer over to his tiny fanboy and left them to bond. I didn't sense anything bad happening, and Gajeel had looked more surly-grumpy than growling-grumpy after the fact.

 _ **He was meeting with Raven Tail as their double agent at Makarov's behest.**_ And G2 seemed to think that this conversation hadn't been one Gajeel enjoyed. His overall tension levels had gone down after talking to Rogue and he didn't snap at anyone for the whole night!

 _Mission(s) accomplished! Get Gajeel to relax a bit, and get Rogue his chance to talk to Gajeel!_

But this was an unexpected side effect of the night. Gajeel had been scouring the city for the past two days looking for cats. Then he had come to me, and demanded I track down a cat for him. Apparently it was supposed to be a Dragon Slayer thing now.

"Because your standards are too high for house cats to manage." _Foremost on the list of requirements: Badass._ Which in Gajeel-speak meant someone he could reasonably spar with. Which was in pretty short supply...Around here at least. Maybe in Edolas, their home world, it would be a different story.

 _ **Pantherlily the Exile meets all of Gajeel's desired requirements.**_

I shook my head, trying to clear the swarm of information from my mind. Why Pantherlily was called the Exile, what he looked like, what he fought with-

 _That's a freaking huge sword...and holy crap, that cat is buff. How can a cat be buff?!_

"You got something."

"It's nothing!"

"Kid, where's my cat?"

I had to improvise an escape route, quickly.

-vVv-

 _Note to self, Magnets + Gajeel = ?_

 _ **Noted for future experimentation and analysis.**_

-vVv-

I had passed a new horizon of insanity. I was sitting, trying to think of a name for the voice in my head.

It had to be a unique name, not something I would hear anywhere else. Something uniquely and completely hers...

 _ **Gildarts is en route. Gildarts Shift begins in 2 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes.**_

 _You're just trying to distract me...You're getting a name!_

 _ **My designation is sufficient.**_

 _Your designation was assigned to you by the monster who killed our birth family and tried to take away our free will._ This argument tended to follow the same patterns. I was just happy that she was actually responding as opposed to silence unless I touched my magic.

 _ **You are the master of our life.**_ What she meant was whatever name I assigned her would be the one she used from then on out.

 _Not good enough! You're a person too. I picked my name when I started a new life. And you are not the same tool they made you to be. You can't stay G2.0 because you're not her anymore!_

She had no response to this. I took this as a point in my favor. I'm not sure what it said about my mental state if I was keeping score in arguments with...basically myself, but I wasn't overly worried about it.

But if Gildarts was coming...

I jumped to my feet, hissing at Cubellios that I had some surveying to do.

 **:to what end?:** She inquired, flexing her muscles slightly and slimming down from 'massive' to simply 'large'. She was still about the size of a boa constrictor. (We discovered she could do this after her hiding in my bed to escape the cold resulted in her cracking the frame.)

 **:to teach Sky Wyrmling how to fly:** She hissed in amusement and quickly slithered out of the hall beside me, protected from the chill by a band at her neck that had a rune meant to keep her blood at a comfortable 80 degrees. With the ability to scorn the outdoor temperature, Cubellios was a lot more fearless about venturing out and about. Especially if there was something amusing to be seen.

-vVv-

"Fae, I really don't think this-"

"You are cocooned in enough enchantments to survive falling off a five story building onto your head with nothing but minor bruises. C'mon, it's now or never the shift will be starting soon!"

"Why are we even doing this?" I gave the Sky Dragon Slayer a bright grin, tightening the laces of my red and white shoes and adding a spell to make sure they didn't go flying.

"We're working on your spatial awareness and reaction time while we're in free fall. The human instinct when they're falling from a great height is to panic. But we need to get rid of that if we're gonna make any progress in your flying. I want you to focus on the air around you, how it feels and how your magic responds to it."

"I can do that, but-"

"No buts! We've gotta figure out how your aerodynamics work if we're ever gonna get you off the ground. Now remember: Don't worry about the impact. Your protective seals will work like a giant trampoline and bounce you back to the top. And if you get off target, Cubellios will catch you." The blue haired healer looked remarkably steady and not like she was going to run away the moment I took my eyes off of her. Fear aside, she did want to overcome this fear of heights. It also meant she trusted me a great deal that she was willing to even try this crazy idea.

"I am seriously questioning your methods..." Wendy said with a gulp.

"You say that, but you're still here! Brace yourself, the shift starts in 15 seconds..."

-vVv-

"Hi Gildarts!" The Crash Mage looked up at the cry and saw a green haired girl fall from the top lip of the straight tunnel leading to the guild hall. She did look familiar but...she was too young to be a wizard... She was at least falling properly. Spread eagled and not even looking nervous about the rapidly incoming ground.

 _Should I catch her? I'm not getting any sense of incoming disaster..._ When your magic was literally all about making things come apart, you got a sense for when something was about to go horribly wrong. And he wasn't getting that feeling even though the girl was very clearly in deliberate free fall.

She tucked herself into a ball as if dive bombing into a pool, throwing herself into a spinning motion with a strange whizzing sound and a startling burst of speed. Then she hit the ground...And bounced upwards with incredible velocity and a loud _boing_.

"It woooooorks!" She cheered as she soared upward again with a crow of triumph and clearly not even the least bit affected by her impact with the ground.

A far less calm sound, it sounded rather like a strangled shriek of terror, came from down the tunnel and he paused to look back.

The girl, about the same age as the first, had long dark blue and was falling with a look of comical terror.

"Tuck and roll!" Came a distant call from above. "Cubellios!" A large purple snake with wings dove out of the sky, catching the girl in one of her coils and soaring upwards again.

 _Magnolia's gotten a lot more lively since I've been gone if this is what the kids are doing for fun these days._ He then turned and started back towards the guild hall.

-vVv-

We only had a few minutes of optimal jump time to make the most of. When Gildarts was in the hall, the Shift ended and the city went back to normal. So we were going back to the guild hall, very windswept, but laughing. Wendy partly from enjoyment and partly from nervous relief.

"So, how was it?"

"Once I...got used to it? It was...kinda nice. I don't think I like moving that fast though. At least not in the same direction and with the ground coming at me."

"Well, I can tell you that your flight will be limb based as opposed to my wings." I said, nodding firmly as we walked into the guild hall.

"Why do you say that?"

 **:once you stopped flailing like a falling tree-rat, you moved to striking position:** Wendy politely kept looking at Cubellios to the end of her long hiss before looking to me for the translation. I still hadn't worked something out to make the Parseltongue enchantment transferable to someone else.

"She saw it too. After you got over your initial panic, you always streamlined your body to pass through the air more easily, hands over your head instead of to the sides. That means your ability to fly probably depends on whatever air your generate from your hands. Most of your best combat abilities come from either there, or your breath, so that'll be what we focus on next. And you can't say you're not meant to be in the air because you never once got disoriented in your falls or flights with Cubellios." I punched her shoulder with a smile. "Face it, Wendy; you were made to fly! You just need to remember it."

"You think I already know how?"

"I'd bet money on it! ...You know, if I had any." _Alas, components are expensive no matter what field you are in..._ I needed to do another job. Soon.

The shoes on my feet had been a tongue in cheek idea I had after I decided to add the funny sound affect our anti-concussive force seals. The jump pads Sonic used made such an iconic sound and they made me laugh...and I figured giving it a sound effect would help Wendy be reassured there was actually something protecting her. I'd changed the color of my shoes to red in some places for my own amusement to go with the sound once I had listened to parts of the story.

But the Sonic spin-ball move I had done? That was sheer improvisation. And while I hadn't been trying to do any actual damage...I did so want to see if I could make that a viable attack.

 _Might need some kind of armored clothing for that. My back isn't made for that kind of thing._

"You're already out of cash? How do you spend it so fast?"

"Materials." I said, stretching and letting Cubellios slide around my shoulders for warmth. "My magic seems to be straddling the line between Caster and Holder, so I wanna see what kind of magical tools I could make. And none of that stuff comes cheap."

"You mean the stuff you're buying isn't cheap..."

"I refuse to be known for low quality goods!"

"How are you managing to get the shop owners to sell you product?" That...had been another improvisation.

-vVv-

 _The shop owner looked over the counter at the shards of lacrima I had placed on his counter. They were small, they honestly looked like gravel, but they were also meant to store energy. They weren't quite a controlled material, but they were very close. (Actually, if people realized what I was planning on doing with these, they might just declare them controlled...)_

" _Aren't you a little young to be buying Kinetic Lacrima?"_

" _Yes. Yes I am." I held my breath as the man looked at me for a moment longer...then shrugged and held out a clipboard with nonchalant casualness._

" _Well, it's nice to see someone with healthy hobbies at your age. Sign here, kid. That'll be 25,000 jewel."_

 _-_ vVv _-_

I...was not sure if I had accidentally used magic to Phineas my way to materials no ten year old should have access to. But I'd only worry about that if the item I was making with them only lasted for a day.

 _I never thought I'd have to be careful about how I line-drop something._

"There...might be some magic involved..."

"Fae, you didn't use some kind of Charm magic on him, did you?" Wendy looked alarmed and I hurried to pacify her worry.

"No, no, nothing like that! If I did anything, I didn't realize it! ...Which would be even more concerning..."

"Yeah, just a little. I think you'd better talk to Mystogan or someone." _Actually, given his experience with mind affecting magic, Jellal might be the guy to talk to in this._

"I'll ask him. But I didn't do anything on purpose. I just accidentally referenced a story where some kids about our age manage to get away with all kinds of crazy stuff because the adults providing their building materials never question why ten year olds need sheet metal, hydraulic presses or anything."

"...I think you'd better not try and get anything else until you've double checked to make sure your not accidently using Charm magic."

"Probably for the best..."

A loud crash made Wendy and Cubellios flinch as something flew through the guild hall roof, trailing fire.

"Is that...?"

"Yeah, that's Natsu. He was just saying hi to Gildarts. Come on! You've gotta meet him, he never stays in town for very long!"

I concluded that running around carrying Cubellios must have been a tremendous work out for Eric and contributed to his overall physical strength and stamina. Even with her scaled down to a smaller size for me, I was still breathing hard when I arrived at the hall. Gildarts was already sitting down, a drink and food set nearby as people interrogated him for news.

My eye automatically drifted to the side.

Cana was sitting nearby, but not so close that she seemed to be deliberately eavesdropping. Her eyes met mine and then dropped, turning away in shame.

 _ **She's scared to tell him he's her father.**_

Yeah, that had been something that popped up years ago. I'd only regulated it to the back of my mind. Mystogan telling me about Edolas, and triggering the recall of that information, had made me go back through all the stuff I had read over the years that I'd never really noticed...and boy howdy was there a lot that G2 picked up that I automatically incorporated without really noticing.

"And here's one of our newest members! Wendy Marvell. Wendy, this is Gildarts!" Master was sitting close to Gildarts, hearing his public report. They would go aside privately and he would get the private scoop on what was going on in the world.

"Pleased to meet you, sir!" Wendy said, smiling like the cute girl she was and bowing to him politely. The Crash Wizard laughed.

"Sir? I'm not that old, kid." He paused and then looked around. "Speaking of kids, where's Fae?"

Dead silence fell. Everyone stared at him in disbelief.

I was taken aback for a bit, and even a little hurt until G2 spoke up.

 _ **You hadn't unlocked your magic when he left. He thinks you're still a civilian ward.**_

There were cases of young wizards accessing their magic once in need, and then never being able to touch it again because the trauma overdid it. It put a door in to access the power, and then closed and locked it.

 _Oh...He's forgiven...Well, mostly forgiven. Activate Crocodile Tears!_

I totally heard G2 sigh in my head in exasperation. It wasn't just my own breath in my ears. I refused to believe I wasn't rubbing off on her in some ways.

"You...you don't remember me...?" The minor illusion emphasized large, watery eyes that reflected more light than they should to give the impression of greater sadness. I had been toying with the idea of adding some sound effects. Either sad music, or a muted zone of silence to make whatever I was saying more impactful.

But for now, this was enough.

"Huh? Oh, you're that girl who was bouncing around town earlier." I pouted, letting my shoulders slump and layering Puppy Dog Eyes over Crocodile Tears. "I..don't think I've...Wait."

Gildarts leaned in close, squinting at me.

I had gotten a lot taller since I was seven, when he had last seen me. My hair had grown out to my shoulders, instead of being close cropped from my head injury. I had also grown into myself as a member of Fairy Tail. Before, it had been a place I lived and I stood out as a stranger amidst family. Now it was home. I belonged here.

"I don't...Fae? Kid, you got your magic working!" I dropped the illusions and laughed, jumping at Gildarts. He acted...oddly. He shifted to catch me with his off hand, hugging me with a laugh.

 _What's up with that?_

 _ **His dominant arm has been replaced with a prosthetic and he isn't so good at controlling his strength with it yet.**_

 _What? Since when?_

"That's old news, man. She's even got her circle put together!"

"Atta girl! Let's see it!"

-vVv-

Gildarts was enjoying catching up with his family, and seeing how the little green haired waif had grown into a sassy, young, as yet unmarked but undeniable member of Fairy Tail.

 _Jumping off of cliffs at her age...The next generation is in good hands!_

Between Fae's energy and Wendy's sweetness, it certainly looked like the two girls would be the ones to set the pace for the rising generation. The de facto leaders, though they only had each other and Romeo at the moment.

After Fae greeted him and showed off her circle for a bit, she went to help Mirajane behind the bar. Wendy lent a hand as well.

"Cutest bar crew ever." He chuckled into his drink as Fae levitated plates and mugs all over the place while Wendy gathered up dirty dishes, weaving around each other with laughs and familiarity. The big purple snake Fae had been wearing was now stretched out by the fire and allowing Romeo to play with her tail.

"They're good girls." Makarov said fondly. "And good for each other."

 _Family's growing all the time._ Gildarts could see a number of new faces as he glanced around the room. A cute blond girl who Natsu had joined when he came back from wherever he had sent him flying. A blue haired woman hovering around a mostly uninterested Gray. A large, dark haired man reading by the fireplace, seemingly oblivious to Romeo climbing all over him, using an amused snake as an improvised climbing rope. And a scowling black haired, piercing riddled punk glaring at him from across the room.

Makarov had also mentioned there was one more, but he needed to remain reclusive for Mystogan's sake. Another of Erza's old friends, Jellal. He was at their guild cabin, a smaller property set away from people. He needed medical treatment and therapy to recover from being mind controlled for years, blasted by the elements of an unstable etherton blast and then stuck in a coma for months, followed by being beaten into a pulp by a powerful dark wizard. The kid deserved some down time, though Makarov said he was eagerly awaiting clearance to join normal life. Apparently Mystogan had agreed to loan him his identity for public use.

Lucy, Juvia, Simon and Gajeel were those who were immediately present. Makarov had told him their names, who had brought them in and general descriptions of course. But seeing how they were in the guild hall told Gildarts volumes about how they felt in regards to Fairy Tail. Out of all of them, only the Dragon Slayer seemed to be ill at ease, still glowering at him-

 _Oh damn. Dragon Slayer._

Dragon Slayer who was unfamiliar with him and who had no reason to trust him.

 _He can probably smell the other dragon._

Their staring contest across the guild hall was interrupted by the sound of Wendy's tone becoming uneasy instead of welcoming. Their gazes shifted as one to the other men, wizards from Twilight Ogre, said something to Wendy that Gildarts didn't quite catch. But it obviously made her uncomfortable.

There came a splash and the wizards were now liberally soaked in fruity wine.

"Oops!" Fae's voice rang out completely unapologetic. "My bad sirs, I'll clean that up for you. _Scourgify._ " The charm had no visible effect other than to make soap bubbles burst from their stained clothing and make them squirm slightly. It removed the wine stains, and Fae had moved in beside Wendy to clear away dirty dishes from the table, making them fly about with a little more velocity than was strictly necessary. The foreign mages said nothing more to the pair. And the trio of Fairy Tail wizards sitting at the next table relaxed only once Fae and Wendy were out of reach from the unknowns.

 _Not normal, but given how Fae was snatched out of the hall under everyone's noses, I can't say I blame them._

But Fae was still angry over whatever had been said. Her hair was shifting slightly, carried on the drifts of magic she was exuding from her skin. He could taste the faintest promise of destruction in the air.

He reached out as Fae passed, instinctively letting his hand rest on her shoulder. He went to just let a microscopic portion of his power mingle with hers, breaking up her angry aura so she didn't accidentally lash out with the residual power she had collected.

But that wasn't all that happened.

She went stiff as a board, eyes widening and staring into the distance as a look of absolute terror came over her face.

"Fae?" _Flash back to her kidnapping? No..._

Haunted eyes looked back at him, tears filling them as Fae shook slightly under his touch. The touch of his prosthetic metal arm.

"Gildarts...his name...is Acnologia." Then her legs folded under her as she collapsed like a dropped rag doll.

Gildarts caught her reflexively, staring at the girl with utter shock and disbelief. Makarov bent over, quickly checking her over and reassuring the worried wizards that Fae was fine, she had just gotten a bad shock. The snake, Cubellios had vanished out the door in a surge of violet scales as Gildarts cradled the unconscious girl, too shocked to react.

"What...in the actual name of Myrddin was that about...?" He asked Makarov in an undertone. "How the hell could she know...?"

"Faerun's magic is incredible." The old guild master said simply. "Incredibly powerful, but also incredible personal. She probably saw a portion of your last quest-."

And if that was the case, if she had seen something he had seen...Only one thing he had encountered in the last three years could elicit a reaction like this.

 _Acnologia._ So the cataclysmic force of pure destruction (Not nature, nothing about that beast was natural) had a name.

Gildarts was suddenly aware of Gajeel's hard stare, alternating between him and the unconscious girl. While he wasn't among those clamoring to know if she was alright, he was certainly paying a lot of attention to her. Happy, and the new white cat Carla were gently lifting Fae out of his hold and to somewhere she could lie down. A room upstairs. A thin trickle of mist drifted through the door, gliding up the stairs. A long, sleek shadow passed the window, also headed upstairs.

 _She'll be fine._ Gildarts assured himself, his celebratory mood at being home rather spoiled by his accidentally traumatizing a child. _She's got plenty of people around to take care of her. And all that monster can do right now is scare her._

And what a monster it was. Fairy Tail made a habit of destroying monsters that made little girls cry, but this was a whole new breed. One that he would need time to prepare himself if he wanted to face him again. He'd escaped last time because his injuries were accidental, however horrific they were. Next time he saw Acnologia again, he would do his best to make that thing remember him.

-vVv-

 _ **Mystogan has arrived. Cubellios is nearby.**_

Yeah, I could feel the weight of the size shifting snake on the bed beside me. My head was still swimming, images of what I had read off of Gildarts flashing through my mind and making me flinch again.

Blackness darker than the cold of space, slashed through with etherion blue. A pale underbelly leading up to a head with teeth...eyes...no, those weren't eyes. Just empty, white spots of power. And the oppressive aura. The horror of a blade of grass looking at the wildfire bearing down on it. Not just the laughable hope of surviving. No, what burned the deepest was a clear, distinct knowledge...that not only were you about to be destroyed. But this thing wouldn't even notice that you were in its path, before or after it had killed you.

 _ **Acnologia.**_

G2 affirmed, voice subdued and quiet. I wanted to know more...and I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget I ever saw that thing. _Pure nightmare fuel._

"Fae?" I squeezed my hand reflexively, noticing that it was being held by a much larger one. Tears were still running down my face.

"I'll be ok..." I just needed some time...Time to process the image, and time to construct a barrier of happy memories to hold the horror at bay. "I just...I want it to go away...I can still see him, Mystogan. He's still there. He..."

"What did you see?"

It took me a moment to force the words out of lips I could still barely feel.

"...A dragon." But unlike the glimpse I had gotten of Igneel, the sight of this beast only filled me with terror. "Gildarts ran into a dragon while he was on his job... He got in the way...it's why he's back. He lost an arm. It wasn't even attacking him, and he still lost an arm..."

"And you saw that..."

 **:hatchling, if the man who smells of dust did this to you, I will bite him...:**

Cubellios was clearly more than a little unnerved. Once second I had been fine and happy, the next, after Gildarts touched me, I was freezing up and passing out.

 **:no. He didn't do anything:** I assured her.

"She's upset too."

"She was gonna go bite Gildarts. I'd bet on him surviving it, but still..."

Mystogan gave a humorless chuckle and I heard the faint rasp of his glove running down Cubellios's back.

"I would too. If he can see a dragon and live then there isn't much I would bet on taking him out." I lay there in silence for a bit longer.

 _ **Natsu is waiting outside, as are Freed, Happy, Lucy, Gray, Erza, Simon, Wendy, Carla-**_

 _I know, I know, the usual suspects._

I need to distract myself. And my friends from worrying about me. It probably wouldn't work, but...

"I think I'm almost ready to make a magical tool." I told Mystogan. He lifted his head, a smile crossing his features.

"Which one? You've told me about several."

"The headband."

"For the ninja skill set? Fae-"

"Just for a physical enhancement, I'm not about to try spontaneous simulacrum creation." I assured him. _Yet._ He exhaled slowly.

"Take me through your process." Since Mystogan wasn't a Rune Wizard, he couldn't help a lot in the details of the spells. But he knew his way around magical tools. Especially ones that bonded with their users like this one would need to.

"The Core is for a Ninja Academy Graduate. Granting enhanced speed, strength, durability and proportionate reflexes. Also allowing stable visual illusions, incorporeal decoys, and extreme sleight of hand...that may be short range teleportation. I don't know yet." He gave me a look. The kind that said that I had better make it sleight of hand and not teleportation. I sighed and waved the hand he wasn't still holding in acknowledgement.

"Spoilsport..."

"Materials needed?" he asked with only a small smirk acknowledging my complaint.

"Base: Metal plate etched with stylized leaf symbol attached to bandana, preferably in dark blue or black. Foundational story written in runes stored inside enchantment lacrima. Additional enchantment lacrima containing the techniques and physical enhancements. Kinetic lacrima shards to provide power."

"Where are the stabilizing lays located?"

"Micro etched into the symbol on the front."

This kind of talk helped us both relax and unwind from the stress of the situation. And then Natsu and Gray accidentally broke through the wall instead of the door. Erza yelled at them, Lucy and Wendy just moved around them to come to me, Happy was cuddling up to me, fur puffing slightly at Cubellios...

It was normal again.

I basked in the familiar sounds and sights of Fairy Tail...and let that memory cover what I had seen in Gildarts past with the warm balm of family.

-vVv-

Since I wasn't actually injured, I managed to persuade Mystogan to help me start to put together my headband the next day. Wendy was off on a job with Levy, and Mira was more than capable of handling the morning rush by herself. Weekdays were always a bit slow.

Normally, it would have been better to do this work indoors. But I needed peace and quiet to get this done without wasting my weeks of effort and preparation, and the guild hall was literally never quiet. I'd already showed my runes to Freed and he said they looked like they should work. I'd checked them twice with G2, and she had gone over the most likely things to go wrong until the chance of this blowing up in my face were reduced to about 7%.

"Etherium conducts magic the best, but you'll get a much stronger hold out of steel. So for your first try, you should use the regular connectors." Mystogan informed me, opening the front of the headband. In order to make wearing it easier, I had decided to go with simply making the plate a shallow box, shallow enough that you couldn't really tell it was two layers of metal instead of one.

The back of my soon to be newest item resembled a harddrive in blue lacrima and orange glowing runes.

Since Naruto had by far the most developed story in the whole series, he was the titular character after all, I had decided to put his story of progression into this item. And since it would be all stored inside a lacrima, which would have room for a lot more information than what I was putting in it, this enchantment could be moved to another item as I grew and became more able to handle additional powers.

 _Shadow Clones, you may elude me for now, but one day you will be mine!_

I had written an extensive paragraph, describing Naruto as a young boy. Headstrong, endless determination, and more importantly, endless energy. Hence the addition of my kinetic relays matched with lacrima of the same type. The more I moved, the more energy I would have. In theory, anyway. It wasn't a perfect science. I would run myself down eventually, but this would give me several more hours of effective use.

I scanned it, biting my lip and checking each part of the text carefully for errors, or unclear phrasing...

"I think I'm ready." At this, Mystogan, wearing gloves designed to wick away excess magic, placed my largest piece of lacrima before me.

I had been storing enough of my own energy in this to magic it malleable to my will. So I shaped it into a thin, but deceptively strong sheet, just big enough to fit into the space inside the metal headband.

Once I did that, I let the string of words, the story I had written, trickle down, one word at a time, into the lacrima.

It came to life and began to glow...

Energy moved through the lines of tiny words that linked the sheet to the other smaller lacrima set into the metal before me. I bit my lip then as I put it together, the metal backing fitting into place with a solid click. I bolted it onto the metal fabric and then sat there holding it, feeling for if was ready...

 _ **Activation incomplete.**_

G2 said blandly.

 _Come on...I'm so close!_

What had I done with Link's hat in the Tower that I hadn't done here?

I thought back, brow furrowed. Mystogan sat quietly and let me think undisturbed. He simply waited.

 _Tower. Link. Child. Alone. Scared. Fight. Sword. No experience, needed experience._

This was Naruto's headband. What he earned from Iruka, his father figure, when he found out about the Kyuubi, Kurama. What he prized and valued. What became the shaping force of his life.

I smiled suddenly, tying the bandana into place as I spoke the words.

" _I don't quit and I don't run. And I never go back on my word. This is my ninja way!"_

 _ **Activation complete.**_

-vVv-

Mystogan, sans his mask because it was actually far easier to breathe without it, watched as Fae raced around the clearing with her new magical tool. She was thrilled at what she was discovering, and he was happy that she was so overjoyed. It certainly seemed to be everything she wanted it to be...

Though she hadn't mentioned the possibility of running up the sides of trees. But judging by how she laughed, she wasn't that upset.

"And once again, I defy you gravity!" This was said with great relish. And then she paused suddenly, hands patting her head as though to assure herself it was still there.

"Something wrong?" He called.

"Just making sure my hair doesn't decide to get all weird and spiky. Also, let me know if you see me going blond."

"Blond?"

"When I did this before, I noticed some spillover effects. It didn't affect me, just Happy, but it's always better to be aware of the possibilities."

"Very wise." _Don't laugh. It's very good that she's thinking ahead and showing foresight. Don't laugh because of how funny it looks to see her looking so serious about the possibility of turning blond..._

The banished prince, reached for his staves, lying on the ground beside him, and rose.

"Do you feel up to a test run?" This got a brilliant grin fired at him from his pupil.

"Lead the way!" She cocked her head then and giggled, zipping over to him and noticeably faster speeds than she could have managed before, and pulling his mask back into place...

Then she did another lap of the field and let out a delighted laugh.

"That makes it work ever more!"

"My wearing a mask?"

"Circumstantial support! Naruto's first real teacher always wore a face mask! The more accurate it seems to me, the less magic it seems to use!"

"Maybe it's just your concept of the story that is supporting the enchantment latching onto a passing detail in order to channel more power into your item." Mystogan felt this was far more likely. There weren't many actual magics that relied on the user deluding themselves into thinking something. There were several curses that did that, but this was no curse.

"Noted! Where are we going and is it close enough to go on foot? I want to practice tree running!"

Mystogan's plan had been to give her a run through the woods, then letting her get used to the item's enchantments on sand, stone and mud so she would be prepared in just about any situation.

Mystogan's plan had been to let her play and tire herself out, noting how long it took for that to happen in order to report back to Makarov about Fae's progress.

Prince Jellal of Edolas stopped dead at the sound of something tear open and a massive surge of energy suddenly vacating the area. Fae swayed on her feet, eyes wide and blank as she read what had just happened...

The duo turned around, back towards Magnolia and their guild hall.

They emerged from the trees to see...White

It was as though the whole city had been turned to ashes. Buildings were gone, people had disappeared. All gone.

 _But...They couldn't aim, They couldn't use it. It was useless. I made sure of that. How did they...?_ He had destroyed the semantics of the stave they used to direct the Anima. He had made doubly, triply sure that there were no traces of it left. No spare copies, no left over materials, nothing they could use...(He had earned his banishment just with the amount of royal property he destroyed.)

"They made another one..." Fae whispered, standing by his side, eyes focused on some distant point, barely keeping herself from shaking. "Byro managed to rework the Anima, find replacement parts, design new ones...it took him a long time. And it isn't perfect..."

"What went wrong?" He asked in a dull tone. Fae was silent for a second...

"It wasn't meant to take the buildings..."

 _So they did intend on this new Anima to convert people into energy. It isn't just about taking what this world can spare anymore and sucking in people on accident...though it hasn't been accidental for a long time._

Mystogan lifted his gaze upward, seeing the familiar, damning faint line hovering in the air.

 _You..._

This wasn't just innocents at the wrong place and time, people who were caught in the line of fire and got pulled along. The first time the Anima had been turned on people had been an accident. The two experiments that had followed, that drove him to his breaking point, had caught one or two people.

This wasn't harvesting energy for day to day living. This was an attack. They had aimed for the biggest bright spot they could, knowing full well it contained wizards and a populated city. The only thing they could be using this much power for was war.

 _You took my family._ And Fairy Tail was his family. This wouldn't just be an Anima he could close. They had taken too many important people to him to just try and cover this up.

A small hand wound into his and bright blue eyes glowed up at him from under a silver head plate. Trust shone in those eyes. That he would make the right choice.

Their own had been harmed, their city and their guild. Every standard in the guild law dictated what must now happen. And it was Mystogan's job as an S-class wizard to see to it that they were carried out, since he was guild master interim in Makarov's...absence.

"Fairy Tail is going to war." Fae's quiet statement made him feel a flicker of guilt. He was dragging his apprentice, a child, into a fight she had no place in...

 _No. That isn't right._

Fairy Tail was Fae's family. And it was her right to defend her family.

"Anima can be reversed." He told her, clasping her hand a little more tightly. _We can get them back._

"But not if they drain the lacrima." She would know that clearly. Have a timer in her minds eye of how long they had before they started to lose wizards.

He didn't know what to say. But Fae looked up at him. A steely, cold resolve in her glowing eyes.

"It's ok Mystogan. If I can't protect my friends...then you can be damn well sure I'll avenge them."


	32. Edolas

Mystogan used his Wind Walk staff to carry us to the ruins of our hometown from our previous location.

 _ **Natsu, Wendy, Lucy, Happy, Carla, Gajeel and Cubellios are all here, but rather confused.**_

I passed the information on the Mystogan that we weren't alone, not completely. Just knowing that made the ice in my chest loosen a little into something more comfortable.

 _Mira, Gray, Erza, Simon, Jellal, Master and everyone else is still gone. But we're not alone. I'm not alone._

"The Dragon Slayers and the Exceed I expected to be here still, but Lucy?" We landed where the guild hall had been and saw Lucy's clock-like spirit, Horologium. As we approached, Lucy climbed out of the Silver Spirit's protective compartment.

 _Celestial magic is kinda broken. Noted._

"What the heck just happened?" She demanded, eyes wide and hand near her keys and whip. "We were just coming back from a job to turn in guild dues and then suddenly everything goes dark and the town-!"

"It's a phenomenon called an Anima. I'll explain more when we're all gathered together. Fae, can you locate the others?" Cubellios was already gliding through the air, scales half lifted in agitation,

 **:hatchling, the den and your friends have disappeared! Something has stolen all Life from the area along with its magic:** I hugged the big snake tightly, relieved that she was here. She shifted her mass down to about 7 feet long and draped herself protectively around my shoulders, her head cocked and ready to strike at any threats.

 **:My teacher knows what has happened. We will go and rescue them:**

I didn't know why she was still here, but I was glad that she was.

 _ **Her cursed state overwhelms her human magic.**_

 _So basically a magnet tried to attract some gold when the Anima swept over her._

I centered my focus and control, ignoring the magical item I was wearing in favor of what I needed.

The Patronus Charm could be used to send messages and to guide people to specific locations. So that was what I would be using.

 _I do wonder what my patronus is..._

I had considered the idea of simply copying another patronus, but decided against it. My magic had settled into one circle, and it would settle into one Patronus as well.

I thought of all the happy times that I had had...how running with Mystogan had been before things went wrong. About sky diving with Wendy. About the secure coolness of Cubellios coiled around my shoulders.

 _I am not alone._

 _And I never will be._

" _Expecto Patronum"_

A trio of silvery owls flew from the circle over my hand. Barn owls with heart shaped faces and a hint of gold mottling their wing feathers. _Mine._ It felt good to think that. I may have been borrowing the spell, but this shape and what it meant was mine.

"Meet by the guild hall for a plan. Fae, Lucy and Mystogan safe." I instructed, thinking hard of the three dragon Slayers that they would be going to... Happy and Carla wouldn't stray far from their partners' sides so the message would get to everyone.

"New spell?" Mystogan asked with a forced casualness. He was extremely stressed out, but trying to keep a level head by focusing on something close at hand.

"New application of an old one." I clarified. "They're semi-sentient constructs with an aura that protects against fear and mind-altering effects, but because they are corporealized memories, they can also carry brief messages to people who feature in your memories." I heard G2 give a status update in a mechanical tone. "One found Natsu. He and Happy are on their way."

-vVv-

Keeping everyone calm and focused while the Slayers and Exceed gathered was hard, but not as hard as I would have thought. Gajeel and Natsu were actually the most at ease.

"The short version: Fairy Tail and everything containing even a scrap of magic in this area has been pulled through to another dimension. This kingdom has been stealing magic from Earthland for years. But only now has it tried to take thousands of lives along with it. Fairy Tail is now officially at war." The older wizards were standing straighter, ready for battle. Even Lucy wasn't showing that much stress. _She's gotten so tough...only a few months ago she'd have been at the very least uneasy about the idea. Fairy Tail has been just as good for her as it has been for me._

"So when are we going to wreck this place?" Gajeel growled, the deeper rumble of a clearly very angry dragon echoing in his voice.

He might not have settled fully into the idea of being a part of Fairy Tail but it was his place in the world now. And he didn't appreciate someone taking it away. That and I could imagine violence wasn't something he ever shied away from.

"As soon as we get enough information to know what to start destroying without killing our guildmates."

"Can we get everyone back?" Natsu asked, leaning forward, dark eyes intent and sharp.

"Yes. Dragon Slayer magic in particular is destructive enough to undo the transformation process of the Anima. It's why you three were left behind while everything else was taken. They are currently in stasis inside the lacrima their magic was forced to convert into while passing through the gate. A solid hit from any Dragon Slayer will reverse the Anima's process. They'll be drained of all their magic except what they need to stay alive, but they'll be alright. Actually..." Mystogan pulled a small bottle out from under his cloak. "You'll all need to take these. It's a small amount of safely processed ethernano. It'll give you something to work with and stimulate your core into producing more. There is no ambient magic to recharge where we're going." _T_ _he Slayers will have it best then._ I mused, watching the older wizards and Wendy take the pills. _They can consume their elements to recharge._

"So what are we waiting for?" Happy asked, wings popping out, ears swiveling. "I can hear the gap in the air."

"As can I." Carla affirmed. "I presume, as it has been several years since you were there, Mystogan, that you don't know the details of how to rescue the guild?"

"You are correct. However, I know the layout of the palace, or the way it was before. I have one ally inside the palace I can trust to help us."

 _ **Pantherlily the Exile.**_

 _Wasn't that..._ My eyes drifted to the Iron Dragon Slayer who was downing three of the tiny pills Mystogan had given us all. _Yeah, that was the cat Gajeel described..._

 _ **Fairy Tail is getting one new member.**_

 _Saw that coming..._

Mystogan handed me the bottle of pills, standing straight.

"Fae's magic is our best bet to be informed about what we'll be doing. Pass through, get acclimated to how your magic feels, and stay low. Fae and I will follow soon, wait for us and work together. Happy, Carla, stay close to Natsu and Wendy."

"Aye sir!"

"Naturally."

"I don't have any way of getting up there..." Lucy said, squinting at the sky. Natsu paused before Happy picked him up.

He glanced at Gajeel who was also looking at Lucy with an evil looking smirk.

 _What are they thinking...?_

 _ **Yeet.**_

 _...What?_

"Don't worry, Lucy, we got a way. Mystogan said to work together so we'll get you there together. Hey, Wendy!" The Sky Dragon Slayer and her partner were already approaching the almost invisible rift in the air. "Trace the gate for us!" The pair sketched a rough circle in the air. Meanwhile, Gajeel grabbed Lucy by the hips and lifted her easily, although she squawked and kicked briefly.

"Up you get Luce!" Natsu said, moving behind them. "Good thing you wore your boots today, otherwise your toes would get really toasty!"

"Stop squirming, bunny and straighten out. You'll throw off your trajectory."

"I DO NOT AGREE TO THIS WHATSOEVER! PUT ME DOWN!"

"Hey, it'll get you there! Clear the way!"

Mystogan and I merely looked at each other for a moment. I could almost imagine the silent words passing between us.

 _Should we try and stop them?_

 _Probably. But will it work?_

I considered this and consulted G2.

 _ **Lucy has a 93% chance of making it safely to Edolas on the first throw and a 99.87% chance of making it the second throw. The odds of her being seriously hurt by this venture, less than .05%.**_

 _Eh. Good enough._

I nodded and Mystogan sighed, straightening.

"Lucy, this is probably the best way to get you there. Kill them once we're no longer in a war situation."

"Mystogan!" She sounded betrayed. "You were supposed to be the sane one of this bunch...!"

"I am sane. But I'm still Fairy Tail."

"Fire Dragon: Rocket!" Natsu's circle appeared under Lucy's feet at the same time as Gajeel threw her like a screaming javelin at the Anima. The spell Natsu had used fueled her flight like an arrow, straight at the portal and-

Lucy disappeared into seemingly thin air and her scream of rage and panic abruptly cut out.

"Hey, it worked!" He looked at Gajeel with a grin that could only be described as playfully malicious. "You next Rustbucket."

"Touch me and your hands get cut off." Gajeel showed his teeth in an answering snarl. "Go catch your bunny, Salamander. I can get there without you."

Happy, worried for Lucy, didn't give Natsu the chance to argue. He simply grabbed him and booked it for the Anima, wings glowing brightly as he poured on extra speed. It seemed he was worried about the blond Celestial Spirit mage.

"See you on the other side." Gajeel took several steps back, sharp eyes gauging the distance and height of his jump.

 _He's just gonna jump?_

 **:Does the iron wyrm require wings?:** Cubellios hissed.

 **:I don't think so:**

I would have looked at what he was planning, but Mystogan was kneeling before me, eyes incredibly serious.

"Fae: I'm not going to ask you to stay here-"

"Good."

"-but you have to promise me something. Edolas being without any magic will be more dangerous to you than others. You have to keep your reserves high, at all costs. I don't care how many pills you have to take: Your magic never goes below 50% capacity, understand?"

"Yeah, but why is that-?" He tapped the side of my head, the side where the lacrima had been- _Oh...The lacrima._

The lacrima that had been placed in a very vital part of my body from near infancy on. I had almost certainly grown dependant on it being there, and without ambient magic to refuel it and keep it active, several things might happen: it could either shrink as it compromised its crystalline structure, leaving behind a massive hole, convert into liquid Etherion resulting in glowing gunk possibly dripping out of my ears and, more worryingly, mixing into my bloodstream, explode-

 _I don't need to know all the ways it could go wrong. I just need to never let it get that far. Thanks._

G2 had been providing vivid mental images of each scenario.

"I don't know what could happen because of that. But promise me you'll be careful. No open confrontation, no pitched battles, keep it stealthy as much as you possibly can." I swallowed hard and nodded.

"I promise." I managed a smile and tapped my still shiny, new headband. "I'm a ninja, remember? They'll never see me, and Cubellios can help keep me safe."

 _ **Her body is reliant on the curse, so she will be operating at full capacity.**_

"A ninja-wizard fairy?"

"And a Jedi like my father before me! Well...probably not that, but it still sounds cool."

"...You'll have to tell me what a Jedi is someday. It sounds like quite a story." I hugged Mystogan tightly, feeling him pat my head as he held me close.

"It is."

"Could you send a message to the Rune Knights to let them know what happened? I don't want any trouble when we come back from this for the whole city temporarily disappearing." _Fair point, and not something most people would be thinking about._ I think Mystogan also wanted me to use magic here where it would refill naturally.

"Would Cubellios mind giving us a lift?" I hissed the question to my passenger and she obliged, rolling off my shoulders and rapidly growing to more than twenty feet in length and her wings emerging easily, more than large enough to give us a ride.

 _How did Gajeel get up there?_

 _ **Improvised pole vaulting.**_

 _I am really sorry I missed seeing that._

G2 then showed me the memory which I hastily filed away for future perusal.

As we flew up, I used my syllabary to tie my kinetic energy recycle rune to both my bracers. Mystogan had brought up a fair point about my potentially running out of magic having fatal consequences in this new world we were visiting.

"Hold your breath." Was all the warning I received before we passed through something cold and dark. A chill that stabbed right through all my clothes, all the warmth my body carried with me.

Then we emerged into a pale green sky and my breath was taken away.

Edolas was not like Earthland. The colors were the tiniest bit off, and gravity felt altered. There were islands of dirt and rock, even an entire mountain in the distance, just floating in midair. There was a river flowing down below...seemingly in midair, going through some twists that would never have been possible in Earthland. It even looked like it was flowing uphill in some spots.

 _This is...This is amazing._

I lived in a world of magic, and it was still amazing to see massive planets in the sky, close enough to see some of the topography.

 _They may be losing magic...but these people still live in an incredible world._

I felt Mystogan take a soft breath as he looked around at the foreign flora and fauna...That wasn't foreign to him at all.

"Welcome home." I murmured, holding onto him as Cubellios kept on flying, casting about for the scent trail of our friends. His arm tightened around me.

"This hasn't been home for a long time, Fae."

 _Fairy Tail is home._ Is what he wasn't saying.

 **:Can you smell where the others are?:** I asked the violet serpent as we cut through the air easily.

 **:Yes, though the different scents of this place are...unsettling:**

"I see them. Down and to the right." They had taken shelter on a low floating island with plenty of foliage. A small blue figure was tucked into the twisted boughs of a tree and she waved at us as she spotted us.

 _Wendy._ I waved back as Cubellios began her descent.

"Fae, my information is outdated, and I don't know how much Carla knows from this place. Or if she knows anything at all. Our friends should have been drawn through and processed into lacrima in or near the royal city."

"A map would help. Something that could feasibly show that kind of information. Everything around here isn't telling me anything useful." G2 was processing tiny bits of information about my immediate surroundings. The names of plants, the composition of the soil, a lot of information about my friends.

"I haven't tried to call any spirits yet, but Pyxis could guide us towards Fairy Tail." Lucy volunteered.

"It might be better to simply focus on lacrima." Mystogan advised. "Edolas is Earthland's parallel. It has its own Fairy Tail."

"Cool..." Wendy breathed, eyes wide and shining. "Maybe they could help us!"

"We'd need to find them first, and I don't know how much time we'll have before they start tapping their latest harvest. Once they start that, we're guaranteed to be missing friends."

A loud growl of anger sounded, I barely jumped but then-

 _ **It's Natsu.**_

Looking at the Fire Dragon Slayer, I bit back a snicker. He was sporting a fat lip and an impassive Gajeel was straightening the piercings in his nose and had some blood on his face.

 _ **Lucy was not impressed when she caught them. Gajeel is impressed with her punching skills.**_

 _She learns well from Erza. Both technique and timing._

I shook off my amusement, knowing the two of them would recover in short order and focused on thinking about Fairy Tail. My Fairy Tail.

 _ **Makarov is dead/in stasis.**_

 _ **Simon is an army conscript/in stasis.**_

 _ **Erza is meeting with King Faust/in stasis.**_

 _ **Jellal is standing next to you/in stasis.**_

The conflicting messages started to tumble through my head like an avalanche of information I couldn't hold back.

"Fae?" Mystogan's voice brought me out of my trance.

"Definitely need something concrete to focus on." I reported, rubbing my head fiercely. "Just trying to read the general information on everyone made it go nuts. It's like they're in two places at once doing different things."

"That...is a possibility. Earthland's ties with Edolas run along many of the same channels. Just like I mirror Jellal Fernandes, each of you would have your own counterpart here."

"Well, I can help with that." Carla said stiffly. "I remember the way to the human royal city. The Exceed nation of Extalia is just above it. And if we don't know how much time we have, we had best get moving quickly."

Hands rested on my head and in a pulse of coolness, the pain of my attempted reading was washed away. I gave Wendy a grateful smile.

"Thanks."

"No problem." Her eyes flashed with resolve. "Let's go get our friends."

"You're not gonna heal Natsu so he can talk?"

"Nah, it's better like this!" Happy said with a snicker, floating alongside our group. Natsu growled a complaint as his friend.

 _ **His jaw is broken.**_

 _Wow. Lucy was_ _pissed_ _at him. Broken jaw for him but just a bloody nose for Gajeel?_

 ** _She believes he looked up her skirt when he and Gajeel threw her._**

 _...I'm going to regret asking, but... Is she right?_

G2 said nothing, but I heard a distinct giggle coming from the NaLu ship in the corner.

Between Carla's navigation and Happy's help in correcting our course, we made decent enough time on our way. I was monitoring my magic levels, seeing how it interacted with this world. I had consciously closed most of my flow points, places on my body where I automatically would emit magic to be refreshed by whatever was in the air. There was none of that here, and it would be a waste to leave it alone. Not much of one, but a waste nonetheless and since we were in an officially declared war, it couldn't hurt to be cautious.

 _Is it official when one side thinks they've won? Can it even be official? I don't think so._

I still tried intermittently to read more information, but there wasn't much to see that wouldn't threaten a headache.

 _No cheating for me about the people. Not the ones I know at least. What about the situation?_

G2 began to quietly recount the present situation in the Royal City, arrogantly named Faustian.

 _ **Magic has become an extremely scarce resource in this world of late due to Mystogan choking off their access to Earthland. Faust has been dealing with civil unrest from his citizens and several wizard guilds who have refused to stop dealing with people who need help. Fairy Tail is the largest among them. They are the most wanted criminals in the country.**_

 _Oh crap that's important._

"Wait!" I stopped, making everyone look at me. "Fairy Tail is considered a Dark Guild here. If you go around with your marks visible, we'll get trouble following us and a lot of attention."

"While normally I would be all for stealth, Fae," Mystogan said with a dry tone. "Here, we are at war with Faust and everything he stands for. That means being public and open about our objections." I saw grins on the boys faces at the prospect of causing trouble, and worried frowns on the girls.

"So we're just gonna go in guns blazing? I'm all fired up already!"

"Not quite. We're going to go get a grasp of the situation, gather some information. The best way to do that is Fae's magic which means we need to get her as close as possible. That part we need to be subtle about. Then once she's clear, we can raise Fairy Tail, and hell along with it."

 _You know, I don't think that's the usual attitude to see about someone essentially planning to depose the local king._

It only took us making it to the city itself for me to be able to reach the information we needed.

It wasn't quite as easy as it would have been back home. Some of the things I was digging for took effort. These secrets were ones that had blood on them in order to hide them. Still...

-vVv-

" _The last ten years have been extremely focused on war and fighting. Faust has led Edo-Fiore in an all out conquest against the rest of the world to seize whatever magic power was left once the Anima stopped being reliable. The country has been well off, but many are tired of fighting. And of being divided against the wizards, which is what people who use magic items are called here. The Anima is considered a miracle by the common people...Magic power they don't have to fight or die for. In this case their Fairy Tail powered lacrima would be enough for them to live high for a year. Conservatively, it could last them for four. They're still preparing the tools necessary for harvest. They begin extraction in two days, four hours and forty three minutes. That's our timeline."_

-vVv-

Entering the city quietly was something best left to Mystogan, Gajeel and I. Natsu, Wendy and Lucy had their own assignment. Happy and Carla went with their respective partners. Cubellios was shrunk as small as she could and hidden under Mystogan's cloak.

"Normally splitting the party is considered a really bad idea, you know..." I told Mystogan as we made our way through.

"We need to get inside that palace so I can make contact with my friend. That requires being in the city." Gajeel had split off from us. Since he had a nose for trouble, he would no doubt find some way to raise hell and cause enough of a distraction for Mystogan and I to do our thing. Whether it be by doing his own thing, or by inciting a riot, I didn't know.

"So which are we trying to do? Sneak in or get him to come out here?"

"As ironic as it sounds, sneaking in is probably our best bet. We'll take a walk around the main palace, hold my hand. Double check what I know against what you feel. Faust is extremely paranoid, so there were once several routes in and out of the palace."

 _ **There still are, but some have fallen into disrepair as he got arrogant.**_

Now that was useful information!

"We might just have a way in."

"Excellent."

-vVv-

" _Fairy Tail has gone underground as much as it possibly can for their own safety. But since they still are dedicated to doing as much good as they can in their own way, they have ways planted all over the country for people to get ahold of them if they need help. And they have some members drifting through towns scouting for work. I can't get a solid location on their guild hall, so it's either a really well kept secret, or it's somehow mobile and doesn't stay in any one place long enough for it to have a history there. The first major thing to know is that Makarov's counterpart is dead here. Several of their members are. I can't get a finger on who killed them. But they'll probably be very cautious about giving us support for that reason."_

-vVv-

Fae's word had sent them in this direction and she had read that the way to contact Fairy Tail in Edolas was by snapping the stalks off of some specific plants and waiting. But only if they were at a safe location. Lucy trusted her, and Mystogan who handed them some money to buy whatever they needed to help them blend in. Which included buying a bag for Carla and Happy to stay hidden in. As Exceed, they would be kowtowed to and draw a lot of attention, and both Natsu and Wendy had easily seen guild marks.

-vVv-

" _Try not to use magic openly. Keep it subtle until the signal."_

" _That's...awfully vague."_

" _Gajeel is in charge of the signal. It will be anything but hard to miss. That being said, if you are threatened, do not hesitate to use magic but be cautious. You will not recover it as quickly here as you did before."_

-vVv-

Wendy and Natsu were both searching for the plant, Lucy was keeping watch for any observers.

Thanks to a Dragon Slayer's keen senses, it wasn't long before Natsu called.

"Hey, Lucy, we found some!"

"Coming!" She didn't see anyone... "Happy, can you go up and keep watch? If we're going to be calling Fairy Tail, we want to make especially sure that it's safe."

"You got it, Lucy!" Once the blue Exceed was in position in a tree, Lucy motioned Carla down.

"I need you to listen in and pass me information if they go into something I wouldn't know."

"Very well." The white Exceed clambered to Lucy's shoulder, and she threw a heavy glare at Natsu.

"And you remember to stay quiet or we'll spook them." He grumbled under his breath, but settled down, arms folded tightly.

"Here it goes then." She bent and snapped off a few twigs, feeling the flutter of magic against her skin. She held the twigs clustered together and lifted them to her mouth to whisper what Fae had told her would get them an ear with Edolas Fairy Tail.

-vVv-

"' _Even if I can't see you, no matter how far away you may be, I'll always be watching over you.' That'll get you in the door, but you have to talk them around to coming and helping." Lucy repeated the words carefully, making sure she memorized them._

" _I think you'll end up meeting your Mystogan's in Fairy Tail. And there will probably be a couple other people there who will have the same names as our guildmates but not be them. Just...roll with the weirdness. And if they won't help us fight, they can at least do something to help get people out of the city once we start tearing things up." Lucy raised her brows briefly at the girl._

"' _We'? What exactly do you have in mind?" Fae's answering grin promised all kinds of trouble._

-vVv-

The twigs in her hand vibrated.

" _Who is this?"_ The voice was low, and oddly familiar, though she couldn't make it out through the heavy aggression... Wendy however mouthed a name, looking shocked.

 _Levy._

Hearing her friend's voice sound like that was jarring, but Lucy pushed down her surprise to give an answer. They wanted to be truthful, and count on the fact that they were dealing with another Fairy Tail that they would help. If they were willing to be labelled dark rather than stop giving help to those who needed it, then they had pretty good odds of this plan working.

"People who need help." Lucy kept her tone even, recalling the words Fae had told her to say in order to get access to the guild hall.

" _To do what?"_

"The right thing." There came a brief pause on the other end of the line, then Levy's voice came back, sounding a bit less harsh.

" _You're calling from Faustian. A representative will meet you in Sekka."_ A glance at Carla got a nod of affirmation.

"It's close."

"Understood, thank you." Lucy then handed the twigs to Wendy.

"Alright, let's see how this goes..." The young healer crouched by the bush, brows furrowed in concentration.

"It might be easier for us to just burn them and get out of here." Lucy suggested but the younger girl shook her head.

"No. Grandeeny had me practice on plants first, and Cait Shelter needed plant doctoring more than...I can do this, it'll help cover our trail."

"OK. Carla, how far is it to Sekka?"

"It's a bit of a trek on foot, but we can make it there and back to the city in time, provided negotiations are short."

"Then let's go."

-vVv-

" _What we want for when we play our hand is insurrection. The city has to be hot, the citizens outraged over what the government is doing."_

" _Ya don't need to tell me how to get people unhappy. Just point me to where we can get some back up."_

" _The lacrima was too big to handle when they first pulled it through. Parts of it have been split off and shown off around the city to bring in public support for Faust's latest policies. A large piece has been placed in the main square, within sight of the palace."_

" _Any idea who I'll get if I bust it open? We want the heavy hitters if we're gonna make the message stick and I ain't wastin' my time protecting wimps."_

" _No way for me to tell without touching it, sorry Gajeel. If I find out, I'll let you know."_

" _Tch..."_

-vVv-

Gajeel knew a thing or two about laying low and being subtle. He normally didn't bother. But Metalicana had taught him several different ways to hunt prey, and he had picked up a few other tricks throughout his life. Mystogan had said to give it about a day before he started stirring up any real trouble. So all he was really gonna do right now was take a bite out of the garrison weapons and find all the lacrima in the city. Busting open the biggest one ought to get him some decent back up, like Scarlet, Fernandes or one of the Strauss siblings.

He was just rooting through some weapons storage facilities when he caught a scent that made him pause.

It smelt like...him.

 _What the hell?_

He peered around the corner, senses honed on the person who was tiptoeing through the darkened room. It smelt like him, but he couldn't afford to get caught in here, especially sabotaging the weapons they would be facing in about a day's time.

He waited in the shadows until his fellow intruder passed by his hiding place, intending on putting him in a simple stranglehold. Whether it led to unconsciousness or death depended on how hard the other guy fought. And if he could think of a reasonable place to stash a body. He didn't have to be as careful to leave his opponents alive here.

But catching sight of the other man's face made him stop dead in his tracks.

A near perfect reflection of his own features was before his gaze. There were no piercings placed there by a draconic parent, and there was a conspicuous lack of feral savagery Gajeel cultivated for survival after being abandoned at a young age. But it was still noticeably and undeniably his face.

 _Kid was right. There are doubles of us walking around here. Everywhere._

His counterpart's senses were clearly less keen than his own as he didn't even notice Gajeel lurking in the darkness. Gajeel simply ghosted out of the room and waited for the other man to emerge, a razor sharp grin on his face.

If this guy was anything like him, he would know the prime way to cause mayhem in town. He could hear the scratch of a pencil on paper. Was the other guy taking notes on something?

Gajeel settled back to wait patiently for his prey to emerge.

-vVv-

" _We don't want to cut things too close, and we don't want to start forcing them to draw on their magic reserves. That could cut into how much time we have before they start to tap our friends for their magic power. Within a day, we all need to be in position and ready to act. Fae will send messages as is needed, but she will be conserving her strength as much as possible. No matter how this ends, there will be a fight and we will need everything we have to save our friends and make this work."_


	33. Basic Sabotage, or Pranking 101

" _Once Fae and I are inside the palace, we will make contact with my friend, Panther Lily, to get more information about where all of our guild is located. I'll be tampering with the Anima in order to create a stable route home for us."_

" _What about Fae?"_

" _If she isn't assisting me, I imagine she'll find something to do."_

-vVv-

 **:There is an art to properly setting a fun-trap:** I explained to the purple snake around my shoulders as I rigged my trap, both G2 and the Naruto ninja headband allowing me to effortlessly calculate the proper angle and tension for the trip wire I was setting up. I was just leaving it wound into a seam in the stone floor, dormant. For now at least.

 **:against friends and allies, you want it to be harmless and amusing. Against enemies, you can let your venom flow:** I paused for a moment in consideration of what I had just said.

"Wow, that is actually an idiom. Snakes, man." Cubellios tilted her head, not understanding my last words.

 **:hatchling?:**

 **:Just remarking on some linguistic differences between your speech and human speech:**

 _Parseltongue has a word for 'linguistic' but not 'prank'?_

Mystogan and I had snuck inside the palace through a disused tunnel. He had gotten me to lead him to the main control area for the Anima.

" _My sabotage of that has to be a little more subtle. And I have to reverse engineer it so that everything that was pulled through with its last use will be restored."_

" _You do know I could literally learn everything about it with a touch, right?"_

" _I need you to keep watch for me and do what you can to ensure that as many troops as possible are locked out of the palace or have a lot of trouble getting in. I'm sure you can figure out all kinds of inventive traps to keep people occupied."_

So that's why I was setting up a hallway to make anyone who walked down it regret their life descions leading up to that point. Cubellios had sniffed out a janitorial closet and the lab Mystogan was in was basically mad scientist grade freaky.

It also meant it was a prankster's playground. I had carefully gone through the whole lab, documenting each substance with a touch and letting G2 process the compounds I could potentially mix up, or the items I could make with what was available. It had been fun, and people would probably regret letting me do this later.

 _Ooh, what if I copy the concept of the Body Switch Curse? People are always a bit messed up if they're having an out of body experience. Especially if they end up in a different body entirely._

Cubellios was helping by keeping her coils to the ground to sense people coming by randomly, which I couldn't always account for, and occasionally serving as muscle if I needed something moved or concealed.

I finished hiding the trip wire and placed the rune, drawn in magic infused ink, helpfully left out on a desk. Then I added the command to my rune syllabary to activate as needed. The longer I was inside the palace walls, the more comprehensive a map I had of the place.

 _Ok, that makes about five one time traps on this floor and four self resetting ones. I think I can call it good for this floor...After a few more simple ones._

A Sticking Charm on a large section of the floor, Grease in another area, all tied to my handy dandy device.

I checked my magic levels and popped another x-ball into my mouth.

 _I've hit up two floors so far with traps. If I can get my hands on the main gate that would help a lot, and if I could get at the barracks..._

I probably could if I left Mystogan behind. But I wasn't about to do that this deep into enemy territory.

I mentally checked on my mentor, carefully thinking of him as Mystogan instead of Edo-Jellal. It avoided the worst of the echoes. Even distantly wondering about Gajeel's current whereabouts got two sharp pings on my mental scanner. Having their be two people by the same name, being members of the same guild

 _ **He is approximately 40% finished with his current task.**_

 _Ok...Let's put some paint bombs out, just for fun. Recipes? I'm thinking a good ten foot section, covered in paint._

 _ **You will require 100 grams of...**_

-vVv-

" _Edolas Fairy Tail may not be as combat oriented as ours is." A glance at Fae made her shrug._

" _Too many echoes for me to tell. The only thing I know is that there's a double for almost everyone we know in Fairy Tail, and they have different enough skills to make it hard to listen to. Only thing that is exactly the same is the guild mindset of helping people whenever and however they can."_

" _That'll be enough."_

-vVv-

Wendy had no idea who they were going to meet. But she had other things to worry about. Carla was gradually becoming more and more anxious the more time passed. She was carrying her under the cloak Lucy's spirit, Virgo, had brought them upon Lucy's request.

" _We need something to keep our marks and maybe even our faces from being recognized. Clothes are the easiest thing to change."_

Lucy was now sporting a stylish pair of gloves to conceal her guild mark and a hat shadowing her face, her bright blond hair tucked up under it to make it look a lot shorter than it actually was. Natsu had gotten a hooded short sleeved jacket very in line with his usual look to cover his guild mark. Virgo had assured him that it was fire resistant, but would burn if held at sufficiently high temperatures. This and his scarf obscured enough of his features to let him pass with minimal scrutiny. So long as he didn't say anything at least. Wendy had a cloak and hood light enough to not hinder her if she needed to move or use magic quickly. It was loose enough that she could conceal Carla under it. Happy was riding in a backpack, carried by Natsu.

She eventually inclined her head towards her first friend, whispering to give the conversation a measure of privacy.

"What's the matter Carla?" The Exceed's body was tense as she huddled into Wendy's side.

"I'm only worried, child. The others of my race...They did not have good intentions when they sent Happy and myself to Earthland."

"What do you mean?" Wendy deliberately lowered her voice still more, spinning some air currents to ensure no one could overhear.

"I mean the tomcat and I had a mission, child. One which he doesn't remember, and I chose to ignore. But I'm afraid that by you being here, we are playing into our enemies hands."

"I'm sure it'll all work out. Mystogan knows what he's doing." It had been difficult at first to call him by that name instead of the one she had known him as. But after seeing him in the guild hall so frequently, having people casually refer to him by that name, it had felt right. More so because Erza's friend Jellal was now also part of their guild. Though he had been spending time in hiding getting back to full strength. He had actually just walked into the guild hall when everything had gone white and the Anima pulled them through.

Regardless of what she called the S-Class mage, Wendy still trusted him.

Her attention came back to the present when Natsu's shoulder straightened suddenly. He had smelt something. She inhaled as well, searching for the scent.

 _Lucy?_

She smelt unusually strong...They had been travelling but it wasn't like her normal travel worn scent. This was...coming from two different places.

A woman wearing a hooded jacket was sitting on a bench outside a restaurant of some kind. She appeared to be reading a newspaper, but Wendy could feel eyes on them.

Natsu however bounded right over to her and flicked her hood off her head, cocking his head.

"Wow. This body double thing could be kinda cool."

"Shut up, idiot!" The other woman wearing Lucy's face grabbed Natsu's scarf and hauled him into an ally. The real Lucy and Wendy all hurried to catch up.

"What the hell are you doing here, you're supposed to be running supplies over to Louen!"

"Chill out, Lucy! If that is your name here too..."

"Of course it's my name, dumbass! Did your car fumes make your memory go foggy?"

"No this is pretty normal for him." Lucy said, striding forward towards the pair. The other Lucy turned her defensive posture going slack with surprise for an instant.

"What the-?"

"It'll take a while to explain and I'll be happy to tell you whatever I can. But for now, just let my Natsu go." The other Lucy wore dark clothing and a perpetual scowl. She looked so different from Lucy with her light clothing and usual smile that Wendy was starting to get a headache. And not one that she could cure...

"Alright other me. If you knew how to find us then you've gotta have had good contact with our people. Start talking, but make it fast. I don't have all day."

Lucy started by pulling off her right glove and displaying her guild mark for examination.

"There's another world that's like a reflection of this one. We're from that worlds version of Fairy Tail. A world with a self replenishing supply of magic, where everyone has their own personal store like an Exceed does here. Your king sucked our whole guild and city into this world to drain them of their magic power." As Lucy said this, her counterpart flicked her eyes all over the three of them, both listening to the report and trying to get a good look at all of them at the same time.

"There are about 60,000 people currently trapped in the capitol. It's the citizens that will die first when Faust starts to drain the magic. We came to ask if your Fairy Tail would help us."

"Oh that bites the big one..." Edo-Lucy pursed her lips. "I'd be all for kicking Faust in the teeth before he can ruin more lives, Mirror-me. But I'm not the one who calls the shots for the whole guild. Master got hunted down earlier this year and no one's got the heart to try and replace him." No, Wendy couldn't imagine anyone else as Guild Master except Makarov. Even her, as a newcomer, could see how he regarded the guild wizards as his children, and they returned the affection. To lose him would have been devastating.

The other blond girl finally seemed satisfied with her examination of their party, relaxing marginally.

"I'll take you to the guild hall. Let you say your piece to everyone there. It's all or nothing for us, but we'll do what we can. Here in Edolas, us fairies stick together." She stuck out her hand which Lucy took and shook firmly.

"We do in Earthland too. We're gonna be starting trouble tomorrow. If you can come and fight, we'll welcome your help. But if not, there will probably be a lot of people who could use some assistance too." Edo-Lucy gave a grin that seemed more in line with what Wendy had seen on Cana's face.

"You got some balls on you, Mirror-me. But the army isn't gonna go down easy, no matter how many magic items you've got."

Wendy's ears twitched as Carla pawed at her.

"Guards are coming, child." She hissed in an undertone. Wendy gulped. _We need to stay low until tomorrow...!_

"Natsu...!"

"I hear em." He said, turning to face the entry to the ally way with a big grin. "Let 'em come."

The men, six of them, didn't even have the chance to speak. Natsu was among them in a flash of fire, fists flying. One he punched into the ground, and used him as a base to unleash a spinning, fiery kick that sent the other five crashing into the walls of the narrow alley with enough force to leave cracks in the stone.

Wendy glanced back at Edo-Lucy who was staring with open shock.

"Damn..." Lucy preened the tiniest bit, and Wendy had to hide her own proud smile behind her cloak.

"Somehow, I don't think that the army is going to last as long as you think."

-vVv-

" _Stay undercover. Once Fae and I are discovered causing trouble in the palace, the barracks in the city will be called in to try and contain or capture us. That will draw guards away from the lacrima, though it won't take away all of them."_

" _Good. I hate boring work."_

-vVv-

"Incredible..." Gajeel was currently subjected to a thorough examination by a man who looked exactly like him, who had even introduced himself by the same name. "I had heard that Faust stole the magic from a world that mirrored our own, but to see it in person is thrilling beyond belief!"

The suit and tie Edo-Gajeel was wearing looked so formal and uncomfortable, Gajeel itched just looking at it.

"Well get a good look while you can. I've got a job to do."

"Perhaps I can be of assistance." The Iron Dragon Slayer looked at his doppelganger and waited.

"I am somewhat of a journalist. I excel at getting to places and finding information that others miss or overlook. I imagine your overall plan is to return the magic stolen from your world?"

"No." Gajeel grunted shortly. "Your king stole the lives of the people my guild protects. We're getting them back, not just magic."

"So the situation is more dire than I feared." The other man mused, rubbing his chin in thought. Gajeel abruptly recognized the tell, Metalicana had beaten it out of him years ago. Edo-Gajeel was thinking about something that made him nervous.

He turned aside abruptly, intending on disappearing and leaving his counterpart, who was clearly not the Dragon Slayer raised by a dragon, when-

"Wait!" A hand grabbed his vest collar. "Taking away such a massive lacrima will upset the people of Edolas, no matter how it is done."

"I don't care." The people of a country built on this kind of cannibalism was one that could go burn as far as Gajeel cared.

"-But! If you get them on your side, then you won't have nearly as much trouble from the militia! The regular army will still oppose you, but the militia won't and neither will the civilians. It'll cut down the opposing forces by more than 50%!" This made Gajeel pause.

He liked a brawl as much as anyone. And so did Salamander and most of his close friends. But they were still only 8 people, currently against thousands with limited magic. And he had no way of knowing whether the first lacrima he had chosen would have anyone good for a fight in it.

"How many are there now?"

"Last count for the royal city alone was 25,000, but only the officers have magic items and the training to use them. I did a story on it, protesting the need for so many while we're at peace-"

 _With an army of that size, peace ain't what they got on their mind._ Gajeel thought derisively.

"And your idea will make that how many instead?"

"My best guess, it would take it down to 12,000. 10 if we're lucky."

 _It's still a stupid big number, but it is better._

"Alright, other me." Gajeel turned, giving him a sharp grin. "What is it you need from me?"

"An interview. Faust may try and stifle my articles, but they are still read by the majority of the city, only the most pretentious of the nobility ignore it entirely. With your word outlining what will be lost if the lacrima are harvested, it will cause outrage, riots and dissent in large numbers."

"People ain't got no reason to believe a word I say."

"But they do believe us, my compatriot and I. We've been right too many times for them to simply dismiss what we say."

Gajeel considered it for a while longer. He did still have a lot of sabotage he wanted to do, it would let him build up an excess of magic power for when the fighting broke out and he'd have to rely on his reserves alone to get by. But this guy didn't smell like a liar, and it would give them a better chance of pulling this off without leaving a smoking ruin in their wake. And there were some people who did consider that to be important.

 _These fairies really are rubbing off on me._

"Fine."

-vVv-

Mystogan had finished rewiring the Anima late in the evening, and had then carefully hidden a small spell token to supply the illusion that everything was still as it ought to be.

"This illusion will only last for 12 hours, and if anyone interacts with it, it will drain it faster."

"I can put up some diversion wards?"

"No. This will blow up sooner or later and I want you as close to full strength as possible." Mystogan picked up all the staves he normally carried. "Come on, we need a place to rest and wait until tomorrow."

 _Somewhere no one will look inside the palace where we can sleep?_

G2 was silent for a moment before creating a mental map with several safe zones highlighted in my minds eye. From my walking through every floor of the palace, subtly setting traps and managing to avoid detection, I had garnered a very good knowledge of the place.

"There's one...two floors up. Unused guest room." Mystogan gave me a look.

"What about this floor? We want to be close to our exit."

"Well, yeah, there's a storage closet- Oh, you were literally talking about someplace to sleep not an actual bed." G2 recalibrated her map markers according to the new parameters I had unconsciously set. "Yeah, there's like three places on this floor alone people hardly ever go."

"Better. But we need the highest odds possible. You're going to need your rest."

"Well..."

"...I know your sense of humor has always been peculiar, but this irony seems a bit much, even for you."

"There is a 93% chance of us being able to sleep here undisturbed for at least 6 hours. And an 86% chance of us getting up to 8 hours of undisturbed rest." I touched one of the walls absently and flinched, quickly withdrawing my hand.

Dungeons were never a pleasant place to be, and this branch of cell blocks was avoided by the guard patrols because of the rumor that there was a ghost from a suicide lingering nearby.

There had in fact been three such deaths, not just one. But only one had been messy enough to become a palace legend. They had all been wizards who had refused to take Faust's rule, aka tyranny, lying down and had been chucked down here to rot.

But I could not fault the reasoning. No one would think to look for intruders in the literal prison cells.

"You'll be ok?" I touched a bracer, activating the premade Patronus defense I had linked to it permanently.

"I'll be fine Mystogan."

"If you're sure." He propped several of his staves in the corner and took another two crossing them in front of the doorway.

 _ **Creating an illusion of an empty cell, and covering up most sounds.**_

Basically setting up camp.

There were two cots built into the walls, but I imagined we would only use one of them. We would still be better off to be able to keep watch in shifts instead of risking us both being caught off guard.

"What did you manage while I was working?"

"Booby trapped four floors of the palace completely, along with some moveable equipment I found lying around..."

I had found the kitchens and found several guards there having lunch. Their spears and other weapons had been set aside. It had been pushing the limits of my magically enhanced stealth to get to them. But Culbellios, shrunk down as small as she could and sticking to the shadows, had scared some rats out of the walls into sight of the kitchen help. The shrieks and panic had been enough of a diversion for me to be able to sabotage half of their weapons, about 12 of the total number that had been there. You never knew when you would need a random glitter bomb to the face of an enemy after all...

 _I am still questioning the sanity of some of these people when they just happen to have had glitter in one of their storerooms._ I really, really wanted hammer space. I could have done so much looting! G2 and Cubellios had gotten me access to all kinds of supplies, both mundane and otherwise. I had managed to rig some foam to come spurting out of the chandelier in the main hall with just a touch when the lights were on...Or in theory anyway. Even if it went wrong, it ought to be good for a quick diversion.

But mostly what I had done had been trip lines, electric wires extended to some unexpected places, and many, many smoke bombs, flashbang grenades and sundry other hazards. And luridly bright paint on a hideous portrait of King Faust, which would only show itself with the proper lighting.

Cubellios had had the idea of something she had done with Eric.

Capsuling her poison and using it to undermine structural integrity of some walls and floors. With a time delay activation, I could hit a button, so to speak, and within two minutes, there would be floors caving in on themselves all over the palace.

I summarized what I had done for Mystogan as I dutifully ate the small snacks he had with him. (The unprepared did not last long as a solo fighter after all.) Then he told me to lie down and go to sleep.

"I'll just nap." I told him. "You need to rest too."

"I can handle it, Fae." I didn't like the way he was looking. Way too serious and depressed. Yes, this situation was dire, yes we were diving headlong into a lot of trouble but...We wouldn't get through this being super professional and tough about this. We would get through it like we always did:

By being Fairy Tail. And that basically meant doing whatever we wanted and thought was right.

And it was not right that Mystogan lose more sleep over this than he already had. Some things he couldn't change, and others weren't going to change yet. But...I was going to change the serious look on his face. With a trick taken from Natsu and Happy's book. Only my silliness was far more calculated.

"Maybe you can handle sleeplessness, but you don't have to and I'm gonna be stubborn about it. You're not a machine, you need sleep too. And you're going to get it while we have the chance if I have to knock you out myself." I completed this statement with a fierce scowl that was a careful blend of Natsu's 'Absolute Fact', Gray's 'Not-Budging' and Erza's 'Obey Me Mortal'. Everyone in Fairy Tail had specific expressions that indicated some aspect of their thoughts or present feelings. Labelling them wasn't necessary for me. I had started naming them for the benefit of others who didn't have my insight.

Mystogan's expression , for example, was a hybrid of several looks I processed too quickly to assign names to. Nostalgic, weary, fond, etc. But it started off with 'What Are You Doing?', a universal favorite among most adults. Also one I was very good at digging out of even the most taciturn human being.

"You've been studying Erza's patterns of caring for others, I see."

"Usable only for cases of extreme hardheadedness."

"So, Natsu."

"Only on train or boat rides. She's actually been expanding to Gray too lately."

"Go to sleep Fae." He sounded fondly exasperated. But he looked far less like a tired war vetran when I did finally close my eyes. His expression had settled onto a much more pleasant 'I Still Have Enough Humor To Find This Endearing.'

Cubellios coiled herself up as a pillow and hissed gently in my ear.

 **:Well done hatchling:** She sounded pleased.

 _Guess she could sense he was upset, or something..._

-vVv-

They had been underway for only an hour, making their way through the town through the back streets and alleys. Every way they could travel while staying out of sight and away from scrutiny. According to their local guide, while Natsu's handling the patrol of guards had solved their immediate problem, it could trigger a larger hunt once their bodies were found.

"Only a Fairy Tail member could have handled six that quickly and quietly. They'll be on us like buzzards on carrion."

"Sounds like you have the same reputation here that we do at home...Only here they actually try to arrest you."

"Arrest? Please, there are only two members of Fairy Tail who don't have 'kill on sight' orders out for them."

 _Wow, this is way more scary in person!_ Wendy's heart had never pounded like this before and it felt...oddly satisfying.

Fae had mentioned that she would get more and more used to high stress situations.

" _Dragons are predators. Apex predators. They're not used to being prey, but humans very much are. You're stuck somewhere between the feeling of not tolerating being chased, and also being very used to it. The happy medium is really liking exercise and adrenaline however you can get it."_

And she was right, the pressure was there and certainly not comfortable, but Wendy wasn't feeling an undue amount of panic.

She caught a whiff of something. Strong and familiar. Carla tensed as well as she scented it and Happy gave a low hiss.

"Natsu, do you smell that?" The older Dragon Slayer took several deep breaths.

"What are they, part trackhound?" Edo-Lucy hissed at the blond running beside her.

"Better." Lucy said shortly.

"I know this scent, but..." Wendy began hesitantly. "It's always been mixed up with everyone else's."

"It's Erza's-" Edo-Lucy let loose with a string of curses that would have made Gajeel look twice.

"Run!" Wendy could smell the fear radiating off of Edo-Lucy as she started to charge all pretense of subtlety and care dropped in favor of just getting anywhere but here as fast as she could. Wendy struggled a bit, fumbling with her wind magic. Usually the air around her felt like a warm, comforting embrace, like returning home, but now it felt colder. More distant. Almost dead to her senses.

She had never realized just how much she took magic for granted.

Wendy inhaled a short gulp of Edolas's odd tasting air, letting her body process it and then-

New energy surged to life inside of her. It wasn't very pure air, but she could still work with it. She put on a burst of speed that caught her up to the taller runners and let her keep pace with them.

"What's wrong?"

"The Hunter's been tipped off about where our guild hall is. We gotta move it, stat! It'll be another masacre if she finds us! We've lost too many people already!"

They were racing through the town, and Wendy could hear several people calling after them, some complaining when they rushed past, some more cursing when Natsu simply bowled them over altogether and several others recognizing them and calling-

 _Fireball and Locksmith?_

"This way!" Their goal appeared to be a massive tree. Several large somethings were approaching from the sky. The tree was starting to shake.

"Legions!"

"Enemies?"

"The Iron Squadron is dedicated to hunting down all Fairy Tail wizards, they're led by the Fairy Hunter, Erza Knightwalker. She's killed dozens of us!"

 _Erza?_

Wendy could identify that scent on the wind. Only it was spiking with emotion that the woman she had come to know usually kept more controlled.

"Those things are too close!" Happy piped up, peering out of Natsu's backpack.

"They will begin their attack run in less than a minute!" Carla had also stuck her head out from under Wendy's cloak.

"Put some steam into it! We can still make it!" Edo-Lucy called, head down and simply sprinting as fast as she could.

 _No we can't._

Wendy could smell some strange magic being gathered up on the backs of the beasts, looking like some kind of massive, bull horned insects with feathers, fur and jagged teeth forming mouth like was coming was already charging up a massive attack.

 _Alter their flight path and the attack will overshoot._

She could see that. See exactly where, and feel how.

"Wendy!" Natsu grabbed her hand, she could feel his magic blazing like a bonfire inside his skin. "I heat it up, you push them back!"

The spell was one Grandeeny had taught her. Something to help in flight. To create a sudden updraft, you needed warm air. She would normally only be able to make a small one, just enough to get Carla off the ground and spiraling upward on a cushion of warmed air. But with Natsu's magic, constantly producing heat at her disposal...

" _Skyfire Rising Thermal!"_ Their two magic circles bloomed over their hands. It was not a Unison Raid. Natsu was just emitting a lot of heat that she was capitalizing on, giving direction and purpose and aiming at just the right spot...

 _There._

Wendy sent a semi visible current of hot air rocketing up, catching all three of the Legions as they began their attack dive. Natsu yanked her off her feet and bodily carried her the rest of the way to the open door in the tree. The two Lucy's had already made it to safety and were calling after them.

The sudden change in the air rocked them, the three blasts of magical energy that they had been aiming at the Edolas Fairy Tail guild hall behind them went wide, firing straight over their heads. A complete miss.

Just before Wendy was pulled inside and the door slammed shut, she heard a scream of anger.

 _Erza's voice._

But both Fae and Mystogan had said that Erza would be in lacrima form until some dragon slayer magic came into contact with her.

The thought rattled incessantly around in her head as everything when dark and she was lost in a sea of loud confused noise. Only Carla's familiar presence by her chest and Natsu's reassuring warmth and her back let her tune out the blaring sounds and focus.

 _Edolas is apparently a lot more different from Earthland than I realized._

 _Lucy is nice, friendly and cheerful back home._

 _Here, she's tough, no nonsense and...mean._

 _Back home, Erza is...Erza. She's the Queen of the Fairies. Everyone is afraid of her, but they know she will do everything to protect them._

 _Here, Erza in the Fairy Hunter who's managed to kill who knows how many members of Fairy Tail._

When Wendy opened her eyes again, it was to see a sight that was foreign and familiar all in one.

There were faces she knew from the party, and some others that she had met afterward. But their expressions were all just...barely different. Though some were very, very different.

"What are you all looking at?" Edo-Lucy rose, dusting herself off and shooting a scowl at them all. "Give em a hand, people. They're fairies like us!"

"Oh god there's two of them?" The first call started a landslide of talk and chatter. Willing hands helped the three Earthland mages to their feet.

"Jumping can be rough on ya the first few times." A man with dusty purple hair said with a shrug. What was his name...? Fae babysat his son sometimes. Macau! That was it.

"I've been thrown, flung, hurled literally in all ways applicable, and all around been turned inside out since joining Fairy Tail. But that didn't feel like anything I've ever experienced." Lucy checked her outfit, correcting a few out of place wrinkles with some efficient tugs.

"It's the only Magical Transporter of its kind." _Levy!?_ This was the voice who had first addressed them when they made contact with the Edolas Fairy Tail guild. "So." She stomped up to Lucy with far more force than she should have been able to muster and glared at her. "Where did you come from Bimbo 2.0 and what do you want?"

Wendy saw Lucy inhale deeply, eyes flashing with a temper that she noticed got a lot hotter whenever she was around Natsu, then the spark went out and she very calmly let the breath out.

"For you to get out of my face, first. And then some time to address all of your guild who is here."

Edo-Levy blinked, rolling back slightly to no longer be pressing Lucy's personal space quite so much.

"...Yeah you're definitely from another world. Our Lucy would have tried to tie me into a pretzel if I did that to her."

"Waddya mean 'tried', you greasy splinter?" Edo-Lucy growled. Lucy spoke up firmly, cutting across her counterparts budding rant with a firm tone. She had been given an assignment by Mystogan, de facto Guild Master and she was determined to fulfil it. Wendy was admiring her for keeping her head when the more they saw, the stranger this place got.

"The thought crossed my mind, but we've got a guild and city to save." She looked around. "Is this everyone?"

"We got a handful of undercovers in some further towns." Jet reported, looking much rougher than the version Wendy was familiar with. "This here is the main body of the guild. We don't go out unless we get a lead on work or a new fuel depot."

"We've already gotten their attention." Carla commented to Lucy, allowing her whisker to peek out from Wendy's cloak. "Present our case. We won't get a better opportunity."

Lucy took another stabilizing breath, then she straightened, pulling her right glove off to display her guild mark, holding up her fist and walking in a small circle as she began to speak in a clear tone.

"The five of us-"

"I only see three-"

"Shut up!"

"-are from Earthland. A parallel world to Edolas. Everyone single one of you has a double there. They can be pretty much identical, like me and Lucy. Or they can be pretty different. Like our Erza Scarlet vs your Fairy Hunter." The mention of their enemy made some people mutter nagrily, but for the most part, all eyes were focused on Lucy as she spoke.

But Wendy noticed that Natsu and Happy seemed distracted. They were watching the crowd, but she could see Natsu's nostrils flaring as he tried to catch a scent.

"But the important part is this: Unlike Edolas, Earthland has a self regenerating supply of magic. Faust has been using the device called Anima for years to siphon magic into this world for his use. But he made the discovery that if he used the Anima to pull people through instead of floating ethernano, or ambient magic in the air, then he could exponentially increase his takings. That is exactly what he did yesterday morning." Lucy's voice tightened and almost cracked. "He took our home city, Magnolia. More than 50,000 people are currently trapped in lacrima inside the capitol, helpless. If their lacrima is drained, they will die. But not only did he take all the civilians, he took all but nine members of our Fairy Tail." Sympathy and righteous anger started to show on the Edolas guild's faces. They knew loss. They knew the rage Lucy was feeling. The helplessness you felt when you watched your family vanish in front of you-.

Wendy automatically fell into a meditation breathing pattern to calm her heartbeat and emotions. She couldn't use healing magic if she was distressed or upset. She always had to have a calm core, some neutral magic that could interact safely with her patients. Carla cuddled closer to her, purring gently and rubbing her arm soothingly.

"One of our S-class wizards wasn't in town when Faust attacked. He is the guild master in the absence of all other senior wizards, and he's called us to war against Faust . We are here, first and foremost, to tell you what is going on.."

"So are you here to call us in to fight too?" Edo-Levy's arms were locked tight over her chest, guarded, suspicious.

 _Tired._

Wendy could see a degree of haunted weariness in everyone's faces. The Edolas Fairy Tail guild was still free, but they were paying a steep price to be able to keep doing the work that they loved.

"I may be relatively new to Fairy Tail, but I do know that none of us need permission to get involved in a fight." This was said with a dry sarcasm that earned a few chuckles and tight smiles from some people. "You can consider this an invitation. We can see things haven't been easy for you. But even if you don't decide to help us fight Faust's army: please come and help the civilians. There won't be enough of us to keep them all out of harm's way."

"You say there's nine of you. Against Faust's entire army, Legions and heavy guns included, plus their captains and Knightwalker herself? We're all for being ballsy, but there's a line between that and suicidal." The comment was reasonable. It made sense. It was completely true that their odds were terrible. It also had a lot of agreement with it. Attention started to wander. At least until Edo-Lucy spoke up.

"Hey, flamebrain, earthland Natsu or whatever I call you." The salmon haired boy looked back at her, clearly not having heard most of what was said. He seemed pretty distracted actually.

"What?"

"You by yourself were good for six guards in less than 2 seconds. They didn't even have time to yelp. You and mini Wendy made the Legion's miss the guild hall when they would otherwise have had us dead in their sights. What kind of wizards are you?"

Wendy allowed herself a small smile.

"We're two of Fairy Tail's Dragon Slayers." And the flicker of pride in her heart warmed her, chasing away doubt, fear and worry. Fairy Tail's Dragon Slayers. Someplace she belonged, someplace where she wasn't alone. The term made several people straighten and look at them with new eyes. It seemed even they knew what Dragon Slayers were.

"Two?"

"Dragon Slayer magic reverses the effects of Anima on wizards." Lucy explained, head tilting with a bright smile, fingering her keys comfortably. "Our last Slayer is inside the capitol tracking down all the lacrima our guild are trapped in."

"...You guys are still nuts. They've literally got thousands of soldiers and Knightwalker. There's no way-" A flare of pride and fierceness rose up inside Wendy's chest. Something very draconic and dangerous. Apparently she wasn't the only one. She wasn't sure how he did it, but there was a noticeable change in the air. Natsu stepped forward, shaggy pink hair simmering with heat and fangs showing prominently as he bared his teeth at the doubter. The one who had disparaged their guild and their ability to protect what was theirs. Minor or not, and intentional or not, that was what he had done and Wendy didn't like it any more than Natsu.

"You guys wanna play chicken and keep running from these guys, that's fine. We're not running. We're gonna get our guild back and everyone in it. So either get moving to come along, or stay out of the way:" He slammed one fist into his hand, lighting it with a fierce angry flame that spoke about how he was truly feeling inside.

"Cause like it or not, we've got a chance to go home to everyone again. And I got no problem burning down a city if it gets me my friends back."


	34. Echoes

Gajeel hadn't been expecting this.

Edo-Gajeel had smuggled him to a safe house. It had all the basic commodities one needed to survive, but it was mostly filled with a mess of wires and machinery and...a printing press?

And the face that was peering up at him was...uncanny.

Bright blue eyes. Tousled green-bue hair. A young form that smelt female for all that it looked male.

"Earth-Gajeel, may I present my partner in the effort to liberate Fiore from Faust: Fae Terra."

"Gajeel, why did you clone yourself and dress your double like a heavy metal biker?" The voice, the inflections, it was freaking weird! It was just like the damn kid but- Wrong!

 _Deal with it later._

"This handsome devil says you can help me cut down opposition to my guild taking back our people and magic." He'd think things over later. He had a mission to complete right now and had to be ready, in place to free reinforcements by sunrise.

Expressions flickered over Terra's face. Confusion, interest and then-

Resolve with a little spark of manic defiance.

 _Like a damn mirror._

"Oh yeah, I can. Has he told you how?"

"Letting people know what's actually happening and not the BS that your king feeds the press." Terra nodded, looking extremely pleased with herself.

"Gajeel and I run the only free newspaper in the country. They've tried to cut us down, but they haven't caught us yet! And the harder they try, the more interested people are in hearing what we have to say."

"I get the info, and this little guy-"

"Girl." Gajeel interrupted with a growl. Shock crossed both of their faces for a moment before Edo-Gajeel spoke.

"How do you-?"

"I'm a Dragon Slayer. My nose is for more than just making my face look better. Keep talking."

"Well then...As I was saying: I collect information which Fae here then writes up and distributes to the public under my name."

"So what's your plan?"

"An interview. With someone from the world we have been stealing from for years now. Fae and I had a theory for some time now that the magic had to come from somewhere, instead of just empty space like Faust and his lackeys have claimed, but your word will be actual, living proof of that."

Gajeel grunted, leaning against a table covered with electronics and delicate wires that would probably be decent for snacking.

"Fine." He didn't have a head for publicity. His counterpart and the kid's doppelganger would be the experts in that. "Make it fast. I've still got some hell to raise before morning. And I need to know where the closest piece of decently sized lacrima is at." Mystogan had given him a bottle of pills to resupply the Earthland mages with magic. And because he was here right now, he'd need a more direct lead.

"I will take you to it." Edo-Gajeel promised. "They've placed a large lacrima in the city center to draw attention and boost civilian donations to the new harvesting project."

"OK. Hang on just a sec." Terra-Fae dove under a desk for a moment and then came back with a pencil and pad of paper. "We want this to be impactful and powerful, but also short enough that our other branches have enough time to put together the articles. I may need to ask some pretty personal questions."

"Just get on with it." The Iron Dragon Slayer's fists tightened briefly. "Keep it about Fairy Tail." His personal past was not something he wanted to get into right now.

"Right."

-vVv-

The morning dawned bright and chilly. People had already gathered around the lacrima in the plaza, marvelling at it's size. It was easily the largest they had ever seen. But those who weren't gaping at the blue crystal were buried in an article that was being passed around. A man in a cloak strode by one group that was reading it collectively, yanking it brutally out of their hands. He strode up to the guards and handed it over to the head of the watch.

The man's face was indignant at first and swiftly soured as he read what was written.

 _The Liberty Flag_

 _FAUST CONDEMNS THOUSANDS TO DEATH_

 _MAGIC POWER: THE TRUE COST AND SOURCE_

 _People of Edolas, for years now you've relied on the magic power brought in by the Anima. When it was announced, you celebrated the return of a scarce resource. When it was tested, Faust was named a Saint in the Parthian Cathedral for his contribution to civilization. But now, the truth must be spread._

 _Faust has caused Fiore to be built on falsehoods. And would have us make mortar for his next palace from the blood of our brothers in another world._

 _Yes, citizens. Another world._

 _The claims of the years that the Anima is harvesting magic energy from a distant star, or simply empty space, have been shattered. How so you might ask?_

 _The arrival of this man, see the photo below._

 _(The photo shows Gajeel and Edo-Gajeel standing side by side)_

 _On the right hand, you have myself. I am known to you, you've seen me around and have helped me in my fight against tyranny. On the left, you see Gajeel Redfox, a renowned wizard from Earthland. A place that mirrors our own Fiore. A place where magic is plentiful and men and women are still born with the power to use it. Every living soul in Earthland has a portion of magic within them. But this magic is closely intertwined with their very life force. If they lose it, they will die a painful death._

 _My fellow citizens, the lacrima Faust has presented to us as the fruits of the Anima Departments' labors in harvesting and condensing magic power for the last 7 years is nothing but crystalized intended murder. There are lives within that crystal. Thousands upon thousands of them. Lives that will be lost if Faust has his way and extracts the magic from it._

 _Mr Redfox comments:_

" _It's a wizards job to fight battles and do things other people can't." And the same system in Earthland once existed here. Our kin, friends and neighbors once were capable of standing up and making a name for themselves with their own hands and hard work. Now they are forbidden from doing the services that provided so many of us our livelihoods. And the grounds on which we have been denied this right are ludicrous and simple: We cannot be trusted to know our own needs. Instead, we live under the draft. We survive on rationed food and water supplies. 30% of our goods, if not more, are taken regularly as taxes._

" _You've got a Fairy Tail's city in there. People that relied on us for protection." Mr Redfox says. "So here's a little fair warning for you: I fought Fairy Tail once before I became a member. Worst decision of my damn life. They didn't do things half way then, and that ain't changed now. So anyone who wants to survive today? Pack up and get out. 'Cause Fairy Tail is coming."_

"Damn propaganda rag." The guard grumbled, crushing the paper into a ball and tossing into the brazier set nearby to help the guards keep warm. "You did a good thing here citizen informing the watch of this. We'll take care of it."

He caught sight of the face beneath the hood. Dark crimson eyes, heavy piercings and a broad grin like a sword wound across the face.

"Is that a promise?"

-vVv-

Chaos erupted near the base of the lacrima. Then the whole crystal shook and sent out plumes of smoke as an ear splitting screech sounded. Like a massive drill biting into stone.

The guards closest to the epicenter of violence were thrown back like rag dolls. Others couldn't make it through the crowd of panicked onlookers to aid their comrades.

When the air cleared and a path was made to the lacrima, the guardsmen were unnerved to see that the massive, solid lacrima that had been their future magic supply...was hollow. Just a thin shell of crystal. The cloaked instigator was nowhere to be seen.

A message was sent to the palace, to the First Captain of the Royal Guard.

A Dragon Slayer had just just attacked a lacrima, and left it empty. A Dragon Slayer and who knows how many Earthland wizards were loose in the city.

-vVv-

Generally speaking, I had a lot of fond memories associated with theme parks.

I was currently gaping at the biggest indoor theme park I had ever seen...and wondering...

 _What kind of king is Faust? He's got the giant energy sucking death vacuum...but he's also got a children's amusement park inside his freaking palace. A side branch of the palace but still part of the main building._

I had asked Mystogan why Faust has such an exorbitantly large castle.

" _The castle was meant to be a fortress for all the citizens in case of attack during the war period. When the war stopped being a full scale conflict, he had a lot of space and funds to use. The army's budget was already inflated beyond reason and he had to do something to persuade the people that the war was over."_

Something other than cut the army down to size, that was. And his best idea was a theme park...

 _Freaking crazy man. And I know crazy!_

Mystogan our current goal was to try and find Panther Lily. I had read there was a spot where the Exceed commander withdrew to get some solitude from his work and from his co-workers. It happened to be up high in this room where no one could easily reach or find him. Mystogan reached it easily with his Wind Walk staff, transitioning our physical forms into mist and simply drifting through the air as white wisps on the air. Cubellios simply flew up, following us.

As he set about leaving a message for the Exceed, Cubellios and I looked over the park to keep watch.

Everything in this room was magical. An exorbitant waste if one considered the scarcity of magic in this world. But I read that there were some parts of it that would allow easy control. Some lacrima set in certain places, hidden joints and movable flooring... If puppeteering had been a part of Naruto's skill set, I would have loved to try and mess up the park, just to make people confused.

 _ **The commanders are coming.**_

G2's report was soft and bland. I saw flashes of Erza-

 _No, Knightwalker. She does not get to be called Erza. She's nothing like my Erza._

She had been talking to two people I didn't recognize. A man in pink armor with a blond pompadour that defied both gravity and good taste and another slightly younger look man in a more tasteful white coat with purple hair and a white streak in his bangs. Those two people were who had just entered the park.

 _ **Sugarboy and Hughes.**_

"Mystogan." He seemed to materialize at my shoulder. "Two commanders of the army are coming, Hughes and Sugarboy." I rattled off the names, only noting that Pantherlily was not among them, though he had spoken with them earlier. That meant that retreating was the correct course of action here, as we were not yet ready to fight.

"Has anyone started stirring up trouble?" I steeled myself with a mental shield against the echoes and glanced over the other members of our guild scattered around Edolas.

"Natsu's group has made contact with Edolas Fairy Tail, but they haven't done more than that though they are planning to hit the outer walls in an hour to draw out the army. Gajeel-"

The echoes were there when I thought of the Iron Slayer but not as jarring. They had almost harmonized...

"I think Gajeel made contact with his Edolas self." I saw a flash of chaos and a blur of iron shavings. _Iron Dragon Roar._ "He's already attacked a large lacrima in the city. I can't see who he freed yet." That would take time that we didn't have right now. We were hidden for the time being, one of Mystogan's staff combos let him deaden the sound we were making, keeping it from being heard outside a limited area.

 **:What comes, hatchling?:**

 **:Enemies:** I replied to Cubellios's question. She hissed with an almost eager note in her voice.

 **:We cannot fight yet! We haven't found our ally in the enemy fortress:** My tone had maybe a hint of scolding in it. Cuebllios was a little too eager to adopt the Fairy Tail method of charging headlong into a fight with no plan and no particular worry about how we survived it.

"I take it she's ready to fight."

"Yeah..." Mystogan had gotten pretty good at reading her body language for all that he didn't understand a word she said.

"Well, sorry, Cubellios. Your job is to protect Fae. Best case scenario is that she won't be fighting at all." I gave him a look for a long second...Then I looked back at the massive snake coiled at my feet who was waiting for a translation.

 **:He's being silly:**

There was next to no chance of me coming through this without fighting someone. I was planning on fighting, so just on that principle I would find a way to work in a few swings, even if they were vicariously done through the traps I had set up.

Cubellios offered a very put upon sigh, which made Mystogan give us both a Look.

This one was: 'I know you were talking about me and this discussion isn't over'

"We know the drill, Mystogan. But I think getting through this without fighting anyone is a bit of an unreasonable stretch. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of going to war."

"I'm more concerned about getting you through this without fighting anyone above your skill level. Guards and rank and file soldiers, you two could take apart in your sleep. Officers in the Edolas Army got their rank because they were willing to kill anyone to enforce the laws against civilian magic use."

 _And that means the most likely way to stop them will be with lethal force._

It wasn't my first life or death situation. He knew that. But I still appreciated his efforts to keep me out of a fight where killing my opponent was a likely outcome.

We could see Sugarboy and Hughes making their way through the room now from our vantage point.

"Can you read them?" Mystogan asked.

I squinted over the distance, then tapped a pre-set rune on my bracer. Hawkeye, the distance viewer sniper scope that Link acquired in the Twilight Princess portion of Hyrule history.

The mask like apparatus settled over my eyes like a ghostly illusion, giving me telescopic vision. I had turned off, for lack of a better term, my ninja headband to conserve power once I had finished setting my traps.

I zoomed in, finally getting a better look at the two individuals below.

They were moving along fairly casually, but their posture was wrong.

 _ **Gajeel's attack has put people on high alert. A new article is circulating in the city, proclaiming Earthland Fairy Tail's intentions and reasons for going to war against Faust. And specifically targeting Faust and the current administration.**_

G2's report was accompanied by a flash of connecting thoughts and ideas.

In response to try and curb the propaganda, the government was doing exactly the wrong thing and trying to destroy all copies they could get their hands on.

In the last 30 minutes since Gajeel's attack on the square, the percentage of people who had read the article had rocketed from 30% of the total population in the city to 86% and rising. And, over all, people were sympathetic to us foreigners. No matter how good life was made for people under a tyrant, some would always be dissatisfied on some level or another. Especially in one as top heavy as Faust's that favored conquest over other means of growth.

But the two commanders weren't just ambling through the amusement park, they were patrolling, looking for any infiltrators.

 _ **The commanders of the Edolas Army are using their knowledge of the native Fairy Tail to try and determine what resources Earthland Fairy Tail has.**_

Well...that would only work to a limited degree. While I didn't doubt there were some similarities, the two guilds seemed to be pretty profoundly different.

But the palace was now on alert.

I relayed this to Mystogan.

"Where are the other commanders?" I pulled out my rune slate and called up the map I had been unconsciously drawing of the whole palace while we had been inside.

"Since I'm assuming you mean Pantherlily, tell me about him."

"He is mostly black with white highlights. He has a scar next to his left eye. He was banished from the Exceed Kingdom for taking me in shortly after I first ran away. He's loyal, dutiful and a capable swordsman."

The map in my hands flared for a second, the halls and passages whirling by until-

"There." I pointed at the small cat paw shaped icon hovering over the palace. "He's searching from the air for any intruders with a few of the...jetpack squad. The army has a jetpack squad? Unfair, I want one!"

"You can already fly."

"But it's a jetpack! It's a matter of principle. Can I steal one?"

"No."

 _Boba Fett. Mandalorian armor. Lots of history there...Shelf that thought. First thing I want from Star Wars is a lightsaber._ I was trying to phrase the idea in such a way that Mystogan wouldn't immediately nix it on accounts of the weapon involving large amounts of concentrated plasma being swung around like a deranged lunatic. Not only getting enough power to ignite the sword, but the containment to make it viable and safe enough to use... Maybe Erza would be the better one to ask given that it was technically a sword...

Mystogan lightly rapped my forehead.

"Focus, Fae. There used to be an alcove on the west tower. Concealed from the ground, only accessible and visible from the air. Is it still there?"

 _ **Yes.**_

"Yeah, but if it's only accessible from the air, how do you know about it?"

"A misspent childhood doing anything and everything to avoid my tutors and my father."

That was leading into a whole plethora of stories that looked absolutely fascinating! But I didn't have time to look at them right now.

"Pantherlily will be the only one on a regular patrol who will notice anything out of the ordinary." Mystogan pulled out a lacrima the size of my fingernail. There was a small band wrapped around it marked with a few runes. I squinted at them briefly.

"Voice recording?"

"It'll get his attention. He was popular among the Edolas citizens from what I heard. If he orders a mass exodus from the city to protect the civilians then they will listen if the order comes from him."

"But that would mean telling him what side we're attacking from. And where to send the army."

He smiled, not that I could see it anywhere except his eyes.

"Which is, in fact, what we want." _Oh..._

"Minimum civilian interference and less chance that some scumbag will take a bystander hostage to get us to stand down." And there were people who would do that in a heartbeat if it meant getting the upper hand over Fairy Tail. G2 read that there was, showing me names and examples. My stomach wanted to churn, but I diverted my focus, and hers to maintaining my thoughts in proper structure. To keep calm and to be able to read updates as they came in.

Mostly updates on the locations and actions of our enemies. One of which-

 _ **Knightwalker is approaching.**_

Telling this to Mystogan made him scowl suddenly and deeply.

"Damn...She's good, always has been."

"Like, Rune Knight good or...?"

"Actually comparable to Erza good." His words sent a trickle of well founded fear down my spine.

Erza kinda scared me, just a teeny tiny bit, and she was my friend who I knew would never so much as scratch me.

Picturing her as my enemy was bad enough. But Knightwalker was something else entirely. That was Erza with no restraint on her abilities in the form of Master, or other S-Class wizards to keep her in check.

"That's...bad. Very, very bad." I said lamely, aware of the understatement but unable to do anything else.

"Not just that, I'm also betting she inspires the same kind of loyalty in her troops that our Erza does in the guild."

So if Knightwalker was in any way involved in repelling our frontal assault, then we would lose people without someone there to neutralize her. And anyone who had the clout to do that, would be not fighting several hundred other soldiers.

I zoned out, mind racing through everyone I knew that had a reasonable chance of standing up to Erza when she was being serious...And the cross referencing that list with everyone we had available. It was...very short.

 _Mira, Master, Laxus or Gildarts would stand a chance at facing her, but they're all either in lacrima or weren't anywhere near the Anima. There wouldn't be time to get them. Lucy and Wendy are brave, but not even close to the kind of experience they would need to survive fighting her... Natsu can't beat Erza, proven fact of many, many years of trying. Though it would be close if they actually ever duked it out no holds barred. Gajeel lost to Natsu, but he'd have a better chance of winning against Knightwalker. He's got more killer instinct so he wouldn't hold anything back. Might have an advantage if her weapon is made of metal, but he's out of reach and causing trouble in the city._

"We have no good options. What do we do?" I summarized, looking up at my teacher and trying not to show how nervous I was. He chuckled mirthlessly.

"I'll handle her." _WHAT!?_

My face must have said a lot more than I could vocalize. And it must have been a funny expression since Mystogan actually did laugh, and wave a hand.

"I'm an S-Class Wizard, Fae. I did duel Erza when I received that rank."

 _ **It was a draw.**_

"But you didn't beat her. You just wore each other out and you've only got a limited source of magic right now!"

"I know." He rested his hand on my shoulder. "I said I fought Erza to a draw. Knightwalker isn't Erza, though she is similar."

No...

No, she was not.

She was as skilled as Erza, but she was not as strong. Much like Mystogan, she had access to a very limited pool of magical power. If Mystogan could fight Erza to a draw, then he could beat Knightwalker. I had to believe that.

I swallowed my nerves and worry with some effort. Mystogan's plan to get civilians out of the line of fire rested on my being able to find and persuade Pantherlily to help us. And he was now needing to leave me alone in order to keep me safe.

I lurched forward and hugged him tightly, burying my face briefly in his cloak. His hand rested on the back of my head as he accepted the embrace.

"What if he doesn't listen...?" I asked softly. "He doesn't know me, he has no reason to trust me or believe that I am who I say I am." And if Pantherlily didn't listen then a lot of people would die.

"I know you. I've seen what you can do. Lily's a good person, Fae. He'll hear you out, he'll listen."

 _ **And he'll also protect you since he has a soft spot for kids.**_

I squeezed him extra hard, drawing a deep breath and focusing my magic into the headband on my forehead.

 _Focus on the mission._

Objective: Find Pantherlily. with secondary goals of not being detected, and not starting any fights. Naruto had missions, and he saw them through. Not letter for letter, but...

 _Naruto excels at finding allies in unusual places, especially among perceived enemies._

 _I befriended Cobra under the same kind of situation._

"Ok." I accepted the assignment and transfer of responsibility, meeting Mystogan's gaze with resolve. "I'll find him."

The thought came to me and I smiled mischievously.

 _Find Pantherlily -_ _Tora Retrieval mission._

"Atta girl." My teacher ruffled my hair, then rose. "I'll draw the enemy away. When you see your opening, take it. Find me or Gajeel when you're done."

"Got it. Good luck Mystogan."

I was then alone with Cubellios in the high, hidden alcove in the amusement room. The snake nosed me gently.

 **:What do we do now, hatchling?:**

 **:We wait for the apex enemy predator to become distracted:** Knightwalker was absolutely the priority here. **:Then we find our ally and convey the message:**

She drooped slightly with a sigh.

 **:So we do not fight?:**

 **:Not yet. I'm very sure it will happen at some point:**

 _ **Knightwalker has entered the room.**_

G2's report made me fall silent, and I gazed down at my slate. I had to watch for an opening. That meant when the other occupants of the room were either gone or so distracted they couldn't spare any attention to notice me.

I sank into a meditative state, breathing slowly and silently and concentrating...

The past was said and done, it was easy to see. Focusing on the present, the story as it was playing out right now was a little trickier. A moment's lapse in concentration could result in losing the thread.

I drew out runes on my slate.

 _Live Stream Mystogan vs Knightwalker._

Of course, it wasn't that word for word, but it was the gist of what I was after.

The image shown on my slate was a general far seeing view below. Focusing it on Mystogan would have used more power than I could afford. Isolating one element of the story was always harder than just seeing everything all at once. But this wasn't about where he was, it was about the encounter and when I would have my chance to slip out of this room.

There was Hughes and Sugarboy, patrolling through the area carefully while still feigning indolence and inattention. Knightwalker entered, carrying her oddly malicious and bloodthirsty spear, and saw them-

"Report." Hearing the perfect replica of Ezra's voice sound so harsh was not pleasant. It almost rocked my focus, but I held on, just watching...

"No sign of any intruders." Sugarboy said with a flourish of his sword and a bow. "Fairy Tail must not have managed to make it past security."

There was only a split seconds warning.

A movement so fast it was a blur.

Knightwalker had launched a blistering spear thrust between her two allies to create a massive hole in the side of a large support beam of a roller coaster.

 _ **A vacuum wave attack called Mel Force.**_

"Clumsy idiots: There was an intruder right here and you didn't notice." She snarled. "Present yourself for arrest and mercy might be shown!"

"I'll have to call your bluff." Mystogan's voice was emitting from a place off to the left. Closer to the door.

Sugarboy reacted with surprising speed, though still not before Knightwalker let loose another Mel Force that blew apart another section of the park. Missing yet again, I knew. Ventriloquism was something Mystogan had picked up to pad his mysterious reputation. Add that to his air staff and he could make a stage magician weep for joy. Sugarboy swung his sword and-

Whatever Knightwalker hadn't destroyed somehow just...melted. Like ice cream left in the sun for too long, in drops and gobs, it simply fell apart.

 _ **The Rosa Espada, capable of softening anything it touches, though it cannot alter the composition of a material.**_

 _So a limited transfiguration effect, altering structural form but little more. So don't want to see what that could do to a person._

"After all, you do have more of a track record-"

Another bad shot, and he continued as if he hadn't been interrupted at all.

"-of killing Fairy Tail members." Mist coalesced into a solid form. Mystogan, sans one of the staves he normally had on his back.

Hughes and Sugarboy were both reacting, but Knightwalker had seemingly frozen at the sight of the masked man.

 _ **She recognizes him.**_

My breath caught even as I felt my eyes watering from the effort of focusing on the play by play scene unravelling on the slate I clutched in both hands.

Erza's reaction to Jellal had been instantaneous and personal though she hadn't actually seen him since childhood. It had been about as long since Mystogan was Prince Jellal, and there were enough common features between Knightwalker and Erza that-

"Prince Jellal." The statement made Hughes and Sugarboy freeze mid attack.

"What?!"

"The lost prince?"

 _Lost? He always said he was banished..._

Knightwalker almost looked like Erza for a second, softening, twisting with pain and loss. Then it hardened with a raging, malicious fury that Erza had never had.

"You admit to affiliation with Fairy Tail?" Mystogan tilted his head, a movement that looked a little odd to my eyes.

 _ **HIs Skyscraper illusion. He's already moving.**_

 _Ah._ The figure that looked almost exactly liked my teacher placed his hand on his chest, over his heart.

"I claim it with more pride than I ever felt being a Prince of Edolas."

Knightwalker went for the kill. I didn't see her move. Didn't hear anything but the sound of her ragged breathing. Her temper was starting to flare up, straining the limits of her discipline.

Her lunge went right through the phantom Mystogan he had let the three Edolas wizards see. He let out a soft sigh, the sound seemed to come from everywhere.

"You never could keep up."

The scream of rage and madness that Knightwalker let loose contained an explicit order for the other commanders. That being; Take Cover if you wish to live. The crazed spear woman was off in pursuit of Jellal, though how she was following him I didn't know. But he was still keeping ahead. His Wind Walk Staff vs the configuration of her spear that allowed her to move at something like four times her normal speed.

I could feel that my teacher had successfully distracted Knightwalker, much like Jellal had taunted Erza in the tower of Heaven. By playing on their history and poking something sensitive and personal. And much as I wanted to look at the context, I didn't have time for that. I had a cat to find.

 _All the times he asked. All of the times I said no...And now I'm off to find Gajeel's cat._

 _ **Fairy Tail is gaining one new m-**_

 _Yeah, yeah, I know._

But I was still focusing on Mystogan, so there were some things that I heard like whispers in the air even as Cubellios and I started to move.

-vVv-

 _OK, she's distracted. The plan worked._

Jella thought, listening to Knightwalker blow through the halls and some walls in pursuit of him. He wanted to get a good bit of distance between his opponent and Fae before he went hand to hand with her. But in spite of his taunt, Knightwalker had grown up considerably since they last played tag together. She was much, much faster. He had to make use of some ventilation shafts, which were very uncomfortable to squeeze through even as mist, to keep ahead of her.

Moving through the halls with a fuming red head in pursuit, he felt memories he had long since pushed aside in favor of others trying to resurface.

" _Son, this is Erza. She'll be living in the palace from now on." A girl whose knees were only shaking a little bit with nerves and whose eyes were only a little overbright with zealous determination._

" _It is an honor to meet you, your most royal highness!" She almost shouted, bowing deeply. A little too deeply and overbalanced, nearly falling. Jellal reached out and steadied her automatically._

" _You too, Erza. Please call me Jellal."_

This wing of the palace had once been interconnected in such a way that you could run one great circle throughout the whole thing and never need to enter the main business sections of the palace. It also happened to be where children were housed, Mystogan included. The majority of his time, before his banishment, had been spent in here. In company of the same woman who was now hellbent on tearing him to bloody shreds.

Once they entered that wing, he heard a crash. _She sealed off the wing._ Trapping him in here with her and minimizing interference from outside parties. _Good._ He lingered by one doorway as if he hadn't been able to move fast enough, letting Knightwalker close the distance. Let her get a shot off at him.

He reformed into physical matter in the nick of time to swung a staff out to block it, negating the attack with a carefully controlled burst of the energy stored within the staff. The protective capabilities of a Therian Shield were sung about in Edolas history. Combined with Earthland magic, it had made him very nearly invincible. But in the aftermath of the magical bolt he had just blocked, he discarded it, as though he had lost his grip.

 _As a son of the royal family, Jellal's education was second to none. He was getting access to magical tools the likes of which another wouldn't see until they were certified and in their thirties. Magic had been put in his hands since he was a toddler first in the form of toys, then tools and weapons. He had years of practice in handling them that Erza lacked._

 _She fumbled with the unfamiliar weapon, a simple staff meant to fire color bursts to help train for the guards Thunder Lances. It landed with a clatter, the recoil from her shot going wild and spattering them both with paint. She looked mortified. He merely laughed, picked it up and offered it back to her._

" _Anyone can make a mistake, just try it again!"_

 _There was never any question when they were younger which of them was more skilled at magical tools._

She didn't say anything, there was no rant, no attempt at persuasion or dialogue. Mystogan didn't say anything either. All of his words had already found their mark deep in their history.

" _It's wrong that we take all the magic." Jellal insisted over one of their shared study sessions._

" _But we know how to use it so it doesn't get wasted." Ezra argued back fiercely._

" _So we teach more people how to use it to grow better crops instead of making more weapons we don't need." It was an old argument between them, passed back and forth and gnawed over like an old bone. It was a surprisingly heavy topic for children, but they weren't ordinary children. They were the Crown Prince and his future Hand._

" _When you're king, you can decide what to do with the magic. But whatever you do has to be what is best for Edolas." Erza stated._

" _I know that Erza." The blue haired boy ran a finger down the side of his face, along the odd birthmark that people had taken as a sign of his future greatness as a leader. "It's not fair though. To keep magic all to ourselves. Why did I have a moving, life size toy Legion while a man keeping back magic fuel to provide food for his family gets sent to prison?" He pushed his book back with a huff. Erza's reply was cut off by the sound of raised voices echoing through the halls of the children's wing._

 _With nary a glance between them, the duo started to move towards the sound of the argument._

 _Within moments, they found the source._

 _A small white haired man was glaring at Faust with a look of pure outrage._

" _-to violate every standard to which Fairy Tail holds. I am sorry, Faust, but I cannot accept this mandate."_

" _It is already drawn and drafted for finalization. It is the law my friend. It's already done. All magic power remaining within the bounds of our kingdom is now the property of the royal family."_

" _You will divide brother against brother with this law. It will lead to nothing but bloodshed!"_

 _Jellal was motionless, watching two people who had been a central part of his life quarrel. Disagreements had happened before between them, but this felt different. This felt...much much worse. There would be no making up after this. No second chances._

 _The two children watched as the king and the Master of the Fairy Tail guild, who had only ever been friends and allies to one another, parted ways as enemies...The latter to be escorted to a cell._

 _Fairy Tail was declared a Dark Guild before sundown._

 _All banners proclaiming they were sponsored by the powerful guild were torn down and burned. Dozens of arrests were made._

 _The seed of doubt in Jellal sprouted into a small, resilient certainty: His Father was going mad._

They were clashing through the old children's library, it had been remodelled into a large class room. Mystogan's two staves caught the head of the Ten Commandments, circles flaring to life as a flare of electricity ran down the length of her weapon. She bared her teeth, refusing to release the weapon even to spare her the painful current. She bore down harder than ever and Mystogan broke away with a roll, sacrificing another of his staves to fall to the ground. His Sacred Lightning.

 _That's three. Just need to plant one more._

He had been giving ground this whole time, letting Knightwalker chase him to her savage heart's content trying to destroy him. But was she perhaps slowing down? Was she starting to think, realize he didn't have as many weapons as he had before and to wonder-

"Slowing down already Fairy Hunter?" He asked. "I thought you vowed to destroy every last one of us. Guess what, I'm still breathing."

"Not for long you won't be, traitor!"

 _Ah, good, she's angry again._

A flurry of blows made Mystogan's arms ache faintly. Even without her innate store of magic, Knightwalker was like her Earthland counterpart: She was incredibly strong and that combined with the hours upon hours of time she had put into honing her fighting skills had made her capable of delivering an enormous amount of force. The Ten Commandments was also multiplying whatever power she wasted in the recoil and sending it right back at him.

 _I wanted her angry. This is part of the plan._ Or so he told himself again and again as he tried not to keep the fast moving spear head from being decorated with his blood.

 _Ever since Makarov Dreyer was imprisoned, it was like a war zone. Fairy Tail had declared war to retrieve their guild master and they were not stopping for anything. People were suffering on both sides, both the villages that Fairy Tail stubbornly defended and the loyalists trying to do the right thing for their country. It was a chaotic, blood stained mess. People were confused, trying to understand how Fairy Tail, advocates of the kingdom, peacekeepers and helpers, were suddenly being considered criminals._

 _Jellal saw a simple solution._

 _Free Makarov and let the fighting stop, then try to talk them around again. What was happening right now was a waste of resources on all sides._

 _His face stung from the force of his father's slap. Shock was painted across everyone's face as they held their breath, looking between the king and his son and heir._

" _Speak of preserving those wastes of life and time again, and you will learn a sharper lesson." Faust said frigidly._

 _The seedling of certainty grew into a tree of resolve._

 _Later that night, Makarov's cell was discovered to be empty. Someone had returned his Mass Converter to him, fully charged. The old wizard was gone without a trace._

 _The fighting stopped almost overnight._

 _Over the next few days, the only sightings of Fairy Tail wizards came in the form of their members returning to the ravaged battle fields to restore what had been destroyed._

 _Jellal spoke boldly that Fairy Tail was being the better person in this conflict. They were trying to help the citizens of Edolas more than the royal family and the government._

" _I'd rather be one of them than a prince if it means I can help my people."_

 _The red haired girl standing behind Jellal flinched slightly, mouth trembling faintly with emotion._

 _But she said nothing. He only noticed later than she hadn't spoken up. It was quite odd for her to not have something to say about him being the prince. Usually a comfort or assurance. But silence? That was odd._

Mystogan hadn't noticed it then. It had taken years of reflection and thought to piece together what had actually been going on in Knightwalker's mind when he said that. And that was what had been the first nudge of their friendship sundering.

Knightwalker viewed the kingdom of Edolas the same way Erza Scarlet saw Fairy Tail. That had been what saved her, gave her hope, purpose, shelter and family. Prince Jellal had been one of her only friends. And when Prince Jellal had started to push against the kingdom, and his father, she hadn't known what to do or how to feel. He always felt that she suspected his involvement in Edo-Makarov's escape from the palace. But she had never said anything.

Now here was Mystogan, back before her after years, and boldly claiming pride in being a member of Fairy Tail. That bottled up rage of many long years of harsh training and conditioning to be loyal to Faust and the kingdom released in a flood of anger that seemed to go on forever.

 _There was a death._

 _A skirmish between the royal guard and some members of Fairy Tail. It was accidental. Completely and utterly. Rob wasn't as young as he used to be. He shouldn't have been out with the younger guardsmen as it was. But the excitement and the stress of the situation had resulted in his heart failing and the doctors being unable to save him._

 _Erza was devastated. Rob had been the one to sponsor her training, he was the one who would fight tooth and nail to get her a spot in the royal guard. He had recommended she be trained as Jellal's future Hand, his bodyguard and advisor._

" _I'm sorry about Rob." Jellal said quietly, settling beside her, not looking at her to allow her some semblance of privacy as she hastily dried her tears._

" _It's not your fault...it's those dark wizards. Those crooks." He did look at her now, teeth bared and eyes bright with grief. "You were right. Fighting them is making us waste so much magic when it could have been used to..." Her fists clenched, the material of her gloves creaking under the force._

" _I'll get them...I'll get every single one of them. Seize their magic power...so we don't ever have to lose more people like Rob..."_

The S class mage was down to one last staff, his Air Staff which he had all but mastered in his time in Earthland, his time as Mystogan.

The S-class mage called up another Skyscraper. An illusion meant to distract and divert his opponents attention. All he needed was a few seconds.

He had carried his staves with him for years. He knew them inside and out, had modified several of them personally. Specifically, had modified them to be able to be used in various combination attacks. One man Unison Raids that no one else had ever been crazy enough, or desperate enough, to try.

Channeling his will into the magic weapon, feeling the power it held, he reached out further still, touching the lacrima that linked his five staves together. All throughout the lines of their battle, they started to move of their own accord, the air around them cradling them.

 _This will all but drain my air staff. I'll be down to only a few minutes total of Wind Walk to get back through the Anima alone._ But this was a way to neutralize Knightwalker. So it was worth it. He'd recharge his staff when they went home.

Knightwalker managed to pierce his illusion, the spear slamming into his shoulder with a grunt. Even the armor he wore beneath his clothes couldn't shield him from that completely.

But Mystogan smiled behind his mask.

"Five Layer Magic Circle." He shifted his Air Staff to lie between him and the last one, the Therian Shield which would focus the others power. " _Echo's Flight._ " This last was said in a barely audible whisper.

The first surge of power began in the first staff he had deliberately dropped. Then it was caught by the linking lacrima and channeled into the next. And so one, and so on. The loud, random jumble of magic power would normally need to be placed close together and carefully aligned in order to be channeled into High Magic like this. Magic that involved so many different elements, some of which opposed one another.

But the protective capabilities of the shield staff included a reflective barrier, and if it were angled just so when all that magic came into it...

The waves of sound started to bounce through the air in a series of ringing chimes, inundating the entire wing of the palace with a cacophony of noise that steadily grew louder and louder, quickly reaching deafening levels and then surpassing them. The vibrations were affecting more than her ears, making anything she was wearing or holding shake. Including her bones, which were not meant to do so. His Air staff created a bubble of still air around him, neutralizing the sound based attack. All his focus was on amping up the vibrations in the air until it was physically impossible to take any more.

Knightwalker flinched, her hands loosening as faint cracks and creaks told him her bones had begun to fracture in hundreds of different places. While bone had some give, it was not meant to take that kind of punishment.

With his free hand, Mystogan seized the Ten Commandments, hauling it out of her weakened but still formidable grip with a surge of effort. He cut off Echo's Flight, letting the air go still, dropped his remaining staff and swung the butt of Commandments up.

The force multiplying effects that had let Knightwalker pursue him so relentlessly now let him knock her unconscious in one clean blow.

 _Thousands of microscopic fractures in her bones will result in her being in a lot of pain. Her body won't let her wake up and try to move for several hours yet, and she will be too weak to stand unassisted, let alone fight._

Without Knightwalker leading the charge against Fairy Tail, the army's morale would be shaken at best. If she was there, as he bet that she would force herself to be, and tried to rally them anyway, it would have a mixed effect of inspiring some to fight harder than ever, and weakening the resolve of the rest at the sight of their formerly undefeated champion being so weakened.

Either way, he didn't intend on letting her get that far.

"You and Erza both...too stubborn for your own good." He told her motionless body. "Your loyalty was what helped me survive my childhood here. I only wish it had been given to someone better than Faust."

Gajeel had started the fight, Mystogan had cut off one of the hydra's heads with this act. But there were many more to face still. This fight was far from over. Leaving Knightwalker here would be fine, she was out of harm's way and would be given medical attention as soon as she was discovered.

Mystogan had a wayward student to find. If she was channeling their guild in any amount, the debris would lead him right to her.


	35. Commanders

_The overarching plan was to neutralize the commanders, confuse and harass the army, free everyone we need to fight back, and ultimately raze Faust's palace down around his ears. With that many places for things to go wrong, it's a question of when, what and how big of a boom will the result be._

This was the general pattern of my thoughts as Cubellios and I snuck through the high alert palace avoiding guards and making our way to where I could meet with Pantherlily.

The difference between the effects of my ninja headband and the child Link hat was profound and very obvious. While I had avoided some fights back then, I had still gotten spotted more often than not. Now, I could literally feel when someone would have perceived me, but the enchantment on the item I wore prevented them from doing so. Naturally, if I was being really obvious about it, it drained my magic at an astonishing rate, but for the most part, this whole stealth approach was actually working.

Through copious abuse of the fact that no one ever seemed to look up, we made it to the tower. There, we hunkered down, Cubellios wrapped around my shoulders as we scanned the sky.

 _I need a way to draw Pantherlily's attention, but only his._

There were men flying through the air in jetpacks, circling the perimeter.

 _ **Mystogan showing himself to Knightwalker has convinced most people that they are to be looking for an external invasion, not an internal sabotage.**_

So long as they didn't look too closely at the Anima, we ought to be fine.

 **:We seek a large cat, correct?:** Cubellios inquired, lifting her head and scenting the air. **:He has been close by recently:**

 **:How recently?:**

The violet snake shifted her coils, head swaying side to side.

 **:His scent is potent. He passed by earlier this day:**

I...had a very funny idea to try and get him to come back and only him. But I wasn't sure how happy he would be to see me if I used catnip to lure him in. Or at least that concept, translated to a runic form. He was the only Exceed in the palace, no one else would be drawn by the beacon if I used that as a foundation. (I'd only seen Happy on the stuff once and while it was four times as funny as with a normal cat, it was something everyone mutually agreed would not be repeated.)

I felt eyes on me.

 _ **You are being watched.**_

My natural and instinctive reaction was to look around, but Cubellios hissed and struck at the wall, her blunt nose smashing the bricks into gravel where she impacted it.

 **:An unnatural eye:** She hissed, growing a little larger. **:Prepare yourself, hatchling:**

Scrying magic? Who was watching, how had they?

 _ **A command tact can be used to activate scrying spells if they are placed in eyes, ears or other sensory organs.**_

Hughes apparently had one of those.

G2's warning was not verbalized, more a flash of the floor opening up beneath me.

I jumped, Cubellios did too, but the wall I jumped on crumbled beneath my touch and I fell down anyway. I wasn't that bothered by this actually. According to G2, if I stayed on this slide, I would end up back in the amusement park. Plus, it was kinda fun, zooming through the walls like this. I heard Cubellious sliding down the chute as well. It didn't take long before she caught up to me and passed me. I grabbed hold of her as she passed and she easily held herself steady for me.

 _Well, so much for finding Pantherlily._

I guess it was what I had coming for equating my task with Tora Retrieval. _It seems I unwittingly invoked the_ _curse of Team Seven._

I didn't sense any immediate danger, and actually I sensed a transition of materials as I spied a light at the end of the tunnel.

I gave a short whoop as I dropped out of the slide's exit and directly into a...Roller coaster car that sped off, accelerating even faster than before. And the way it was looping, twisting and turning, there was definitely no way this was a normal ride.

"How do you like the Hell Coaster little rat?" Someone called from below in a sadistic, taunting tone.

 _ **Nausea pending in 10 minutes, 46 seconds.**_

 _Motion sickness? I never get motion sickness._

But the timer was still there. Maybe it was some kind of magical effect. Wendy had a spell to soothe that. Troia, she called it...I wouldn't need it for now, though. I just had to get my bearings while moving at high speed.

I managed to focus on who was down below and recognized Hughes and Sugar Boy. Hughes was holding the Command Tact, and the coaster appeared to be following his motions. His smile was not a very pleasant one.

 _Sadist, huh._ Well, there was a very easy way to mess with a sadist. And I didn't even have to lie in order to pull it off! Not really at least. Just selectively misdirect.

I held up my hands and cheered. It was like being back at Akane only with some new coaster I didn't already have memorized! And it changed a lot, rolling here and there...This might have phased me once, but I was now used to flying, both under my own power and not. Training myself to stay oriented was something Mira had actually insisted on, given her own penchant for pulling out wings while using Satan Soul.

 _If you can stay oriented while someone else can't in aerial combat, then you've already won._

"Come on, is that all you got?" I yelled challengingly as the coaster whipped through a gravity defying loop, corkscrewing even as it turned upside down. Cubellios tucked herself down inside the car, which had locked restraints onto my shoulders, but not my hands. I still had my hands free.

 _Ok...Ok I think I have an idea._

"Cocky little intruder, ain't ya? Ok, I'll play with you! Let's see how you're feeling in a few minutes when you're tossing your cookies all over the place!" The car sped up even more. I yelped as though in shock and slapped my hands down on the bar in front of me.

 _ **Nausea pending in 8 minutes, 7 seconds.**_

So that was my time limit. G2 said that I would be restrained into the car if I tried to leave and the more I struggled, the faster the car would go.

I activated my headband with a short jab of thought to send magic into it, basically turning it on.

Ninja reflexes meant you had to have ninja like orientation to keep yourself from getting all turned around in the jumps and crazy maneuvers ninja did.

My timer whirled back and up to 15 minutes with change to spare.

 _Ok, so the Hell Coaster being able to make someone sick is based on an Edolas estimate. With no magic circulatory system to help stabilize the body's regular functions._

 _ **The HellCoaster normally makes someone sick within five minutes. Time remaining: 4:48.**_

I paused and glanced over what made her say that, and my smile took on a bigger cast as I held on.

Hughes was a sadist, like I had guessed. He was planning on stopping the coaster once he was certain I was sick and helpless. So, I just needed to have some surprises ready for him and his partner when that happened. From what I could hear, Hughes was jeering up at my mobile prison, Sugarboy just looked a little bored to be honest.

 _ **He likes an audience.**_

 _So he is actually the court jester instead of an officer._

 _ **He is an army commander and legitimately earned his position and the use of his weapon, the Rosa Espada.**_

 _How?!_

She had no immediate answer to that one. But I didn't have time to look for one.

I hissed my plan to Cubellios and she writhed in anticipation, tucking herself around my legs as I worked as quickly as I could with the limited supplies I had available.

 _I need to get them out into the halls where my traps are. Hughes has too much he can control in this room. Though once I'm outside, Sugarboy will be a bigger problem than he is in here. In this room, there's room to maneuver and avoid his spell's area of effect. So I'll need to take him out first._

Actually, given that I was channeling Naruto and there was one deceptively useful technique that was actually...pretty darn good at stalling people long enough to get an opening. I had the perfect idea!

-vVv-

Hughes waited until he was certain the kid had been sick at least twice, judging by what had flown out of the car. He chuckled, slowing it down and lowering it, eager to see his handiwork.

"I don't get what's so nice about this, but whatever floats your boat." Sugarboy muttered.

"Aw shaddup, just get them and cuff em. We don't have time to really have some fun." The pink armored knight glided up to to car and peered inside.

"Hello there. _Oiroke no Jutsu!_ " The words were accompanied by a puff of white smoke. But what he mostly noticed was the voice didn't sound sick in the least. And whatever the kid had just said, Sugarboy froze. His back was to Hughes, so he couldn't see his face but something was definitely up here.

"Hey, what's wrong?" He fingered his Command Tact, ready to bring on some convenient gorillas to trap the brat in the car.

"S-s-s..." Then the pink armored knight keeled over, dead to the world with a blissful expression on his face and a bloody nose. _What?_

"I can't believe that actually worked..." The kid's voice sounded briefly. Hughes didn't have time to react or ponder what had just happened. A blur of green and purple shot out of the motionless car and was already making for the exit.

 _What the-!?_

 _-_ vVv-

 _That worked a lot better than I thought!_

Going in chronological order of Naruto's progression, he had started in pranks and then expanded to his first actual ninja art. The Oiroke no Jutsu. Loosely translated: The sexy technique.

Since I wasn't Naruto, I had avoided styling it to turn me into an older busty woman. In the minutes of private working time I had on my ride, I instead tailored it to instead transform into whatever the target found attractive. Automatically reading what the ideal was and altering the illusionary appearance accordingly. It was not usable on groups but for targeted attacks like this? It was ridiculously effective. It had worked beautifully on Sugarboy, G2 said he wasn't going to be waking up for several hours! Cubellious had provided some venom which I had then disguised as vomit with a few tiny illusions. Hughes wouldn't stop the ride until I was sick, so I had needed to fake it without actually sacrificing any of my food. I needed my energy!

 _Safe(r)!_

I cheered internally as I made it to the door, Cubellios around my shoulders.

My traps were everywhere around me. I just needed to line things up right. And get him to come out. Because while I could lead him on a fine chase through the whole palace, he had already proved that he could reach me even from very far away.

 _That won't be easy._

"Franken Hands!" Several green skinned zombie like monsters lumbered out of the room behind me.

 **:All yours:** I told Cubellios. I needed time to get actual weapons. My traps were meant to harry, confuse and demoralize. Against non living opponents, they weren't as effective.

 **:Such a thoughtful hatchling:** the snake crooned before lunging off my shoulders, growing to an immense size in midair and impacting the frontmost monster doll with a crash. If animation spells worked about the same here as they did back home, sufficient damage to the puppets would render them inoperable.

Cubellios took up most of the hall, expanded to a massive 30 foot long poisonous purple viper that moved far faster than anyone wanted to see. She was a very effective distraction. But some of the smaller, quicker constructs managed to get past her.

 _Need weapon. STAT._

I ran to a suit of old scale armor.

 _All ninja have kunai knives even if they don't specialize in using them._

So, while I had the Link hat, I could repurpose various items in my surroundings to suit my character and my purpose. I started to pull the armor apart, focusing and muttering...

 _Kunai, throwing knives with way more leverage than their size should allow. Seemingly unending supply-nope, magic cost too high. Just a few kunai then..._

The pointed pieces of metal in my hands glowed faintly and reshaped into the iconic throwing knives. Perfectly balanced and ready to use.

 _Alright!_

It cost some magic to transform them, but not even as much as transfiguring them with a Potter-verse spell.

The constructs Hughes had gotten past Cubellios were small, nimble monkeys and lizards.

 _ **Stopping the equivalent of their brain function will render them inoperable.**_

 _OK. Aim for the head it is._

There were only eight or so opponents who had managed to get past Cubellios. Half chimps and half lizards.

The fastest chimp took a flying leap. I moved to punch it out of the air and it wrapped it's wiry arms around my arm, tail reaching forward to try and get at my throat.

 _Vicious!_

I threw two knives, impacting some apes in the forehead and used the one grappling my arm as a shield against the first lizard's bite. For lack of a better thing to do, I bit the tail waving around my face to keep it from getting at my neck.

To my amazement, the chimp screeched and released me, tumbling back with deep, noticeable marks in its tail.

 _ **Realistic reactions to pain or fear stimuli.**_

The other lizards came at me, slower than the others but with sharp, pointy teeth.

I flared my magic inside my body. An instinctive trick all combat wizards could learn to deflect damage by keeping an attack from making direct contact. It turned a sword cut into a bruise or maybe a broken bone instead of a bloody wound. Much more manageable in the long run. Some could time it enough to even inflict a small counter attack against their opponent. Or, if you were Gildarts, just disintegrate anything that came too close.

Getting bitten by komodo sized lizards was still an unpleasant experience. I spun two fresh kunai into my hands, slashing across two extended necks. The remaining lizard jerked back out of my reach when it's fellows fell inert. I kicked a fallen lizard into the grasping arms of another chimp before running my kunai through its neck, dodging the flying leap of another monkey that would have managed to wrap its spindly but uncomfortably strong arms around my neck.

 _Naruto is a brawler. Free for all fights is what he, as a stamina fighter, lives for!_

I was scolding myself even as my heart raced uncomfortably. The two chimps I had knocked back initially were circling to try and trap me in a pincer movement. They seemed to be capture and immobilizing constructs while the lizards were supposed to do damage.

 _Naruto is known for being hyperactive, unpredictable and kinda dumb._

 _Well, just being in a fight with these odds makes me kinda dumb. Hyperactive is a fairly loose term, but unpredictable..._

Hughes was directing these things. Hughes could probably see me through all their eyes as well.

Just like Bixlow could through his dolls.

I smirked faintly, drawing out a small pellet. I muttered the words to enchant it. It was a ninja like enough tool to be supported by the headband's enchantment.

" _Flash-bang."_

Then I closed my eyes and smashed the pellet on the ground.

The burst of light and sound made Hughes grunt. It also made the enemies around me falter for a split second.

 _Naruto rarely thinks things through. He just goes. If he takes too long, he overthinks things._

My fist slammed into the side of one monkey's head. I caught it's arm as I drew my fist back, slashing my kunai across it's neck. I jumped, trusting my strength and reflexes to give me what I needed, and landed on the retreating lizard's back with my knee. I felt it snap and go limp. Then, somehow, I braced my hands on the ground and kicked up and over like a scorpion, with a flexibility I wouldn't have had normally, and caved in the face of the last monkey.

Three seconds to dispatch the last three opponents once I went on the attack and just attacked.

 _Ok, for future reference: For any combat item I make, I have to_ _at least_ _partially discard my own fighting style and adopt the character's to make the most of it._

Some more stragglers were trying to slip through, but Cubellios was using her venom now to melt large sections of the floor and constructs alike, creating a bottleneck between us and the majority of the park. I disabled the handful of lizards that had managed to get through with kicks, breaking their backs as I tried to think. (I ignored another bite at my leg. I'd have some nice bruises around there later) So long as I kept moving, I would self regenerate a small amount of magic power.

Hughes wouldn't leave his place of power even if we tried to draw him out by feigning a retreat. With his lifeless army at his disposal, he was safest in the amusement park. He knew it and wasn't about to leave.

 _I need to lure him into the open...get him to move._

I gauged the distance and threw one of my paint bombs towards him.

My range was good, and I had a better throwing arm with the ninja strength backing it up. But a pair of turtles, wielded like shields by some stereotypical tribesman blocked the harmless splash of color from even getting close to its intended target.

 _Darn. New plan..._

 _Wait..._

The monkey whose tail I had bitten had reacted. It had felt pain. What else could they feel?

 _ **Fear.**_

 _Ok...New plan._

Naruto was about charging in headlong. But so long as that was my goal, I could probably pad my side a bit with some tactics.

 **:I have an idea to reach their leader, but I need your help:**

Cubellios lashed out the most concentrated rank of constructs coming her way. They were starting to thin out, run, shuffle hop or roll forward in smaller groups so she couldn't get as many with a wide spray of acid.

 **:Do it:**

I didn't know everything about how curses and magic interacted, but it couldn't hurt to get consent before doing this in hopes that it would mesh right.

"Cubellios: _Use NightShade!_ " Normally, I would need to be within touching distance of something in order to enchant it like this. But Cubellios already had some of my work on her, on the collar I had made for her. I just needed to alter the way it was being used right then.

 _It's not permanent by any stretch. It'll only last for a few seconds before resuming it's previous pattern in the collar._

Orange script wound from the personal climate control band on Cubellios's neck, using my words, spoken in the context of a Pokemon Battle, as a new way of shaping itself. What I needed right now was an illusion, a fear effect.

Cubellios seemed to grow even more, the thirty foot long snake doubling in size and girth, mouth gaping with serrated fangs and dripping with venom and her eyes alight with predatory intent. Her next hiss was deep enough to be a roar and a malevolent darkness thrashed beneath her bulk, as though even her shadow wanted to flee from her presence. And her presence was the bowel loosening, mindless fear everyone felt when waking up from a nightmare, but still finding themselves caught in sleep paralysis.

The effect was instantaneous.

All of the constructs within striking distance turned and fled as quickly as they could directly away from Cuebllios and myself.

 _So the Command Tact isn't perfect puppetry. It animates them in every sense, allowing them to be more effective soldiers, but it doesn't dominate them completely._

But the point was: I had an opening. And I saw as I darted forward, makeshift weapons in hand, that as soon as the constructs left a certain area around Hughes, they went inert.

 _He has a maximum distance of effect. At least if he's using so many._

Hughes himself was looking up at Cubellios with wide eyes. Even he wasn't unaffected by the nightmarish sight. There was a bit of black in the red bar floating-

 _What?_

There was an honest to goodness HP bar hanging over his head now. And there was a similar blue bar linked to the baton in his hands. How much magic power the item had left in it.

Similarly, there was a green bar in the corner of my vision, marred by a small section of red, and a mini map of the room in the opposite corner. My position was marked by a small feather, Cubellios by a proportionately large snake and Hughes by a large horned skull. The constructs were marked with smaller skulls.

I saw this and processed it all in a flash even as I ran forward.

 _I just turned this into a freaking boss fight in a video game. If that includes hints on how to beat him, I'm ok with that!...For now. Provided I don't always see things like this._

 _ **It is a temporary effect given your utilization of a Pocket Monster attack command.**_

 _Great!_

The kunai were nothing like the swords Erza had me training with. It was mostly Natsu's straight forward brawling that came out as I charged alongside Cubellios for Hughes. The headband guided my hands and feet, letting them impact with a surprising amount of force. Metal, wood and some sort of plastic gave way under my assault and I managed to make it to Cubellios, who was still guiding the Night Shade illusion.

 **:Fly, hatchling:**

Cubellios lunged out of the illusion with wings spread. As she beat them to give herself some upward lift, I springboarded off her back to launch myself over the last line of defenders Hughes had. Two kunai daggers left my hands in an instinctive throw once I had the right angle. The man himself had his teeth bared in a grimace as he slashed his baton twice.

The staffs that had been in the hands of his personal guard broke free, spinning into position with greater speed and dexterity than I would have thought possible to swat the kunai out of their trajectory.

"Naughty brat, illusions are cheating! And you're definitely being arrested instead of just hanging out in a cell for a few days."

 _ **Illusionary items are highly controlled in Edolas.**_

Cubellios managed to get under me, catching me on her back as she glided through the air. Now we were airborne and had a better angle. But Hughes also knew that Cubellios could fly and that meant...

"Have fun with my Razor Wind!" He called, slashing the Tact around behind him in an arc. The birds and other flying creatures, which had previously been motionless, started up and did so quickly. As did a number of rockets from some kind of space themes ride.

 _ **Those explode.**_

 _Of course they do! What kind of amusement park is this!? There is literally not enough paper in this world or Earthland to write up all the health and safety violations here!_

Cubellios shrank down as small as she could and still carry me and we started evasive maneuvers in the air above the park, swiftly gaining height to give us more room.

Eric had listened to his opponents thoughts to predict where they would strike and what they would do. In turn, Cubellios had been so in tune with him as to interpret his smallest movement as a command. They had been untouchable together.

I could do about the same thing, predict where something would be or how it would approach. It took a bit more focus and attention to their 'stories' and where they would intersect with ours. But Cubellios and I hadn't been together for nearly long enough to have the same kind of seamless partnership that she and Eric had enjoyed. She avoided most attackers, and I used my handful of kunai, whose numbers were swiftly dwindling, to take out those that she didn't manage to avoid. Magic in my feet kept me firmly attached to her back, no matter what maneuver she needed to do.

But this was just a stalemate, a very mobile stalemate.

 _Ok, pros of this situation._

 _We're not dying nor in any real danger of doing so right now._

 _There's a finite number of things Hughes can throw at us._

 _Cons:_

 _In terms of my magic supply vs his, he's got the advantage._

 _We still haven't actually gotten a hit on him._

Shinobi were primarily hand to hand fighters. Hughes looked fit but not athletic. If I could just get close enough...

 _What would Naruto do?_

 _ **Charge in headlong.**_

 _Tried that. Didn't work, though it got closer than anything else._

 _ **Subvert his enemy via superior morality.**_

 _Hughes is a control obsessed sadist who is willing to kill children. Naruto's Motivational Therapy Jutsu thing works when he genuinely believes there are redeemable qualities in his opponent. I don't believe it!_

 _ **Overwhelming force via several hundred Shadow Clones until it gives up. Followed by subversion via morality.**_

Shadow Clones. They and Rasengan were Naruto's signature moves. Rasengan was a devastating close combat strike, which would certainly do the job here but...Naruto only mastered it as quickly as he did through the creative use of Shadow Clones.

 _OK...Sorry Mystogan, I'm trying it._

In a moment of temporary insanity, (I was claiming that in case I ever had to explain myself) I released my hold on Cubellios's back as she looped around a dive bombing, strangely cartoonish, red breasted robin. I was in free fall. I had only seconds to act.

First, I pulled out a smoke bomb, one of the ones I had kept on hand instead of rigging into a trap, and broke it open between my hands. Thick white smoke filled the air, concealing everything. But I could still pick my landing place perfectly, bouncing off of an eagle to land in a free space on the ground, just to the left of Hughes inside his wall of goonies and very mobile weapons.

I landed in a proper crouch to spare my knees.

 **:Hide, quickly:** I hissed softly, watching on my tiny map as she wound away through the mist and to the side. Then I shifted slowly to avoid making a lot of sound. Index and middle fingers tight together, then crossed before me. Reaching mentally for the item and the story I had written to guide it...and then pushing it's furthest boundary until it expanded.

' _I don't quit and I don't run.'_

 _Konoha's #1 hyperactive knucklehead ninja._

 _'I'm gonna be Hokage! Believe it!'_

 _I_ _can_ _do this. I have to do this! I will do this! Believe it!_

 _I believe it!_

" _Shadow Clone Jutsu!"_

There were a lot of _poof_ ing sounds all around me. That and the appearance of dozens of tiny orange dots on my map and a large loss of magic power were the only signs that I had managed to do anything.

"Don't go getting shy on me now, We're almost to the best part!" A gesture I only saw dimly through the mist that had come as a side effect of the jutsu and the movement in the air above us shifted.

The ceiling literally split open, drawing back like a massive set of jaws and letting the daylight and circulation inside. The flock of flying enemies shifted and started flying in a circle, the updraft cleared away the smoke of my diversion.

And revealed an army of Fae's. At least two for every construct still standing. It was quite bizarre to see my own face set in such an apathetic expression. And none of them were even looking at me. But it seemed to be even more unnerving for Hughes.

For a sadist, the one thing they couldn't stand was someone who denied them control and wasn't afraid of their power.

And I had done that basically from the beginning of our little skirmish. From when I was captive in the Hell Coaster to when I refused to get scared by the odds I was facing.

Now, he was not only faced with one defiant child who wasn't scared...but an army of them.

Nothing moved. Hughes recovered his composure and scoffed, one hand on his hip as he looked around himself.

"More illusions? And this many? Kid, you're burning through enough power you're gonna get the death sentence for wasting something so important as magic." he sounded vaguely disappointed...then he smiled. "Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get to play with you properly before that happens. Make up for this little disagreement."

 _He just means torture. He just means torture. He is not actually a pedophile..._

 _ **No he is not. Just a sadist.**_

 _Oh good._

Because my clones and I had all shared the same idea, we managed to act almost in perfect unison.

We gave an answering smile to his unpleasant one. Bright, sunny and warm, and we slowly started to move. All to be positioned properly for the attack. One clone spoke up.

"Oh, you really aren't very good at this game. You've got it all wrong." The lioness construct that leapt for her was intercepted by two other clones.

Hughes's grip slackened on his Command Tact as his eyes widened, staring at the two 'illusions' that clearly had no trouble holding his very solid and real construct back.

"For one, I'm not just a kid. I'm a wizard. And for another..." The smiles sharpened into a promise of violence as every Shadow Clone spoke in unison

" _We are not illusions."_

Then I spoke, independent of my clones.

" _Fairy Barrage."_

The room exploded into motion.

There were two ninja trained clones for every construct and six for Hughes himself. What they all did, I couldn't tell you. Shadow Clones were autonomous. Each thinking for herself as I would, if I had the mindset of being merely a temporary energy construct.

Cubellios struck from hiding and was quickly decimating part of Hughes army with vicious efficiency. About ten clones were watching her extremely long back. They were what I was least worried about.

I grappled one of the tribal warriors while a clone leapt at the thing's face with a kunai, because everything I had been wearing and carrying had also been copied. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the clones taking on Hughes were coordinating themselves to hit one right after the other. He just didn't have the reflexes to defend himself from that kind of steady assault. It took a fraction of a second for one of my clones to attack, which meant the other five had time to place themselves for their next attack. Four of them kept Hughes off balance while two of them held a trip wire back and behind him. When he took a step back to try and get some more room-

A quick whip of motion and Hughes was down on his back. Then there came a cry of triumph as one of my clones, stomping on his wrist, managed to get the Command Tact away from it's owner. Another snatched it up and her eyes went vacant for a second-

 _ **The Command Tact is controlled through a series of preprogrammed movements.**_ G2 began.

 _Woah. She's connected to all of us?_ I had to duck away from an overhead swing from a still mobile and active enemy to keep from getting knocked out. Sure, my clones could take care of me, but they were still me. Funny things would probably happen while I was unconscious.

"Alright, everybody, stop!" The clone holding the baton flicked her wrist in an upward gesture and all the constructs froze in place.

Then the cheering started.

"Tie him up!"

"Gag him!"

"Take his coat!"

"Knock him out all the way first."

"Oh right."

 **:Hatchling, you are in many places:** The snake slithered through the now stationary crowd, scenting and trying to locate me.

 **:New magic, my friend. I'm right here:** Though if she couldn't tell which one was me by smell, that meant a great deal of interesting things for me to possibly do in the future. Namely: False Trails you are gonna get a makeover.

 _Note to self, the clones appear to be a little less focused than I do. How many are there?_

 _ **145.**_

 _Right..._

"Alright..." I pulled out my rune syllabary and transferred my mental map of the area to that as I began to speak. " _Sonorous:_ Can I have everyone's attention please?"

My voice boomed out and made all the clones look at me.

" _Quietus._ We gotta get organized, we've still got a lot to do. You all will be Group 1." I touched the dots that represented them on my slate, outlining about twenty of them. "We've captured a signature enemy weapon and we're gonna use that to our advantage. If we can make Edolas think Hughes is still up and active, then they'll be that much more surprised when the others get here and he doesn't show up to help." The clones saluted and ran, the one who had suggested taking Hughes coat doing so and then clasping her hands together to henge into a copy of him. Others then transformed into various constructs that were standing around and began to accompany her.

They not only had a Hughes look alike with his clothes and magic weapon, but also some very well controlled constructs that Hughes would be able to manipulate with masterful skill.

"You all are Group 2." I traced another circle, but this time around a much bigger group. "Partner up in twos and threes, and scatter around the palace and city, if you can get into it. You are now the spotters and lookouts. Friendlies, you direct and help as best you can, any lacrima you find, you defend and keep anyone from taking it away."

"Boss, we should also have someone mimic Sugarboy!" One clone volunteered with a raised hand.

"Good call, you just volunteered. Use henge. If not, have a few more sisters dispel and get the magic you need from them to write a good cover illusion. You gotta be convincing. Actually, two people sit down and read whatever you can off of our guys here! The more we know the better we can make this look." I turned to the rest of the clones, the 70 or so that were left, then I checked my own magic reserves.

I was tired. I had used more magic that Mystogan had wanted me to while here. Clones had a personal allotment of energy that they used to live and stay solid. Any special techniques, or spells in this case, would burn through the magic that much faster. But everyone else got whatever was left over when a clone did dispel so...

"Half of you, dispel. We need the extra magic more than the extra hands. Sorry girls." Some simply _poofed_ away, others grumbled a bit before doing so. The bit of magic returning to me was most welcome. I was not in the danger zone, though shielding from those bites had been more costly than I liked, but given Mystogan's concerns about my brain lacrima, better safe than sorry.

"The rest of you? You know where the storage closets are." I grinned, tapping my forehead. "Channel Naruto and turn this palace upside down." They cheered, matching smiles appearing on their faces.

Then, I sat down on Cubellios and took a few deep breaths.

Clones were temporary. They weren't meant to focus on more than a few thoughts at a time. If they didn't have instructions, they would run wild and do crazy things. But me? I was the main one. The control node. I still had to think about things in the long term.

I popped another X-ball, the third one of the five I could take today, and let the bit of magic slide into my system, further bolstering me.

My clones were busy, and now: I needed to see what had been happening while I took care of Hughes and Sugarboy.

 _ **Mystogan has defeated Knightwalker. Gajeel has freed several members, including Erza and Gray, from lacrima-**_

The dissonant screech in my head was echoed by the outraged scoff of the clone that had been reading information off of Sugarboy.

"-moldy, gnome bitten ash-hole! I need paint, string, and four gallons of itching powder and starch!" G2 showed me what her plan was and-

"Woah girl, don't go damaging the info dump until we're done with him!" I didn't read anything about what set her off by just touching the clone. _I guess it'd be like looking in a mirror._ The only reason I could see what she planned was because it involved Sugarboy and he was on my mind at the moment.

"It won't kill him! It'll just restore balance to the universe!" She yelled, thrashing violently. "No one screws with Fairy Tail like he did except for Fairy Tail!" Suddenly everyone else was paying attention.

I hauled her back,

"Ok! But we need info before we do anything too crazy to him. And we're on a time limit so talk fast."

She gave me an indignant look.

"It's backwards here. Edo-Gray can't stand going anywhere without at least three layers of clothing and this creep-" She pointed at Sugarboy. "-is the reason why."

"...Sorry, busy processing the idea of Gray wearing clothes for longer than a few minutes at a time. Get to the reason you feel...that, is appropriate." It involved putting some starched, itching powder covered string in some very inopportune places, and even hiding some inside the weave of his own clothing.

"He hit on him! It's the same here in that Gray likes girls and only girls and it makes him super awkward to have a guy coming on to him. Sugarboy flirted with him, he said no and he didn't take that well. Started picking on him and pushing him around, attacking his self image. So he started wearing more and more clothes and layers but it didn't help! The harassment is why he joined Edo-Fairy Tail in the first place. To get away from this piece of garbage!" She punctuated the last words with a hard kick to the man's side.

None of us said anything else...

But I did glance at three clones.

 _Edolas Gray isn't my Gray. But Fairy Tail is Fairy Tail._

Gray had a thick skin. The one I knew at least. An outsider's opinion wouldn't matter to him, but if Edo-Gray hadn't had a guild to back him up when the harassment started, that kind of treatment was poisonous.

And allowing the plan my clone had hatched to come about would pretty effectively neutralize Sugarboy until he managed to take a shower and get new untainted clothes.

"Alright. You've convinced me. You three, take care of him." I ordered casually. "Make it funny, but no maiming." They pouted at the restrictions before one of them hurriedly whispered to the others and they ran off giggling.

If it had been my Gray, I'd have shown more mercy, simply because Gray would exact his own revenge in a blood chillingly effective way. The most I could do right now is give Edo-Gray a chance to get in some personal payback. And that was not a priority right now. I'd mostly given the order to make myself feel better and keep the other clones focused knowing that something was being done to avenge our Edolas comrade's dignity.

Though part of me was still scratching my head at the bizarre concept.

 _Gray keeping clothes on. And if he does it here to the same extreme that my Gray strips, then it has to be a once in a lifetime sight to see him less than fully dressed._

 _ **It is. They are identical in almost all other aspects. It's why Sugarboy fainted.**_

I froze midstep, trying to connect my thoughts with what G2 had just said.

 _Sugarboy fainting...has something to do with shirtless Gray being a rare sight here._

Realization dawned.

When I had used the Oiroke no Jutsu...it had been tailored to whatever Sugarboy thought was attractive.

He was attracted to Gray.

 _Ten minutes on the Hell Coaster, and I'm fine._

 _Tell me I turned into a mostly naked Gray and the sight was enough to make a guy pass out...and I feel nauseous._

 _ **The Gajeel(s) have freed Erza, Gray, Jellal and Simon from stasis.**_

 _ **Mystogan has defeated Knightwalker**_

 _ **Natsu, Wendy and Lucy are en route back to the city to begin the outside assault.**_

Yay. Update. More information. The information meant that trouble was already starting and I could no longer afford to be subtle in my search for Pantherlily. Any chance of being covert was already pretty well blown away, with the chaos that surrounded me of destroyed animal and monster statues and large sections of melted floor.

In fact...

 _ **Barracks.**_

I tapped twenty dots on my map that were clones.

Trap everyone who was off duty inside the barracks and there would be no reinforcements for the army. And no reinforcements meant no extra confidence boost.

"Go crazy girls." The clones cheered as they ran off.

I looked at Cubellios, checking her over briefly.

 **:Are you hurt anywhere?:**

She made a soothing sound and nosed my hair gently.

 **:I will survive, hatchling. I have used a lot of my venom and do not have much left. I will have produced more in a few hours:**

I hugged her tightly, her cool scales bringing a soothing relief to my excitement.

 **:I'm glad you're unharmed:** She hummed in agreement, winding around me in a pseudo snake like hug. I pulled back and looked up at her.

 **:Can you still fly? We must find my tutor's ally, and stealth is no longer an option:**

She flexed her back and her wings emerged. Actually, she also gave a long shake and a low ridge lifted from her back. The kind that would allow her more precise control while in flight.

 _She's got a lot more control over her body than any transformative curse I know of should allow. She's really a work of art._

Cubellios took flight with a surge of muscle and I jumped to her back as we soared through the corridors.

I could see some clones as we rushed by below. They were either rigging more pranks and traps, or they were shepherding staff into rooms and barring them inside, out of harms' way.

There were a few skirmishes between clones and guards, but those were more funny to look at than actually concerning. Some clones had apparently found the guard's training area with a bunch of paint throwing spears and were having a grand time putting a huge Fairy Tail guild symbol on the ceiling of a large, important looking ballroom.

 _They've got fifteen minutes to wreak havoc before I want this oversized, pretentious, waste of space palace to be in ruins._

-vVv-

Mystogan couldn't move as quickly without his Air Magic. And he didn't dare use Wind Walk again, he had to conserve the energy so he could get home with his guild once this was over. Getting out of the sealed wing had been a bit more challenging than he anticipated, but a blast from Ten Commandments had cleared him an escape route. He also had to retrieve his other staves, and find Fae.

So he was running and not really paying attention.

"Halt!" The challenge made him react without thinking.

The spear in his hands had a form that allowed access to Gravity Magic. Gravity Core came to life in his hands as he slashed out in a wide crescent, flinging the six airborne guards back and down with a crash. But someone had managed to ascend out of range of his attack. Mystogan shifted his grip on his new weapon, lifting his gaze-

"My prince..."

The man sized black Exceed hovered in midair, hand lifted to his weapon but seemingly having frozen in shock.

"Lily." Mystogan responded to his shock, though he didn't relax. "When you get the chance, Knightwalker will need medical attention. I left her unconscious in the nursery wing."

"Prince Jellal lives?" One guard exclaimed, struggling to sit up. "His majesty said he died in an assasination attempt years ago!"

 _What?_

Mystogan had shifted Ten Commandments into Silfarion form, ready to flee at the highest speed he could manage. But the looks on the soldiers and Lily's faces were too...sincere to be a trap. The Exceed descended, hand moving away from his weapon.

"My prince, we feared you lost to us forever..."

 _What?!_

There were any number of questions stampeding around in Mystogan's mind, not the least of which was whether or not he should still be running from this.

"It would seem rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated." He said slowly, still in a defensive posture.

"The weren't rumors, your Highness, the lord king found your body fallen defending the Anima, with two fallen assassin's from Ferven, may their memory be lost forever!"

"Ferven? Ferven is no one, or was, they're a collection of farming and mercantile city states." He had to figure out what was going on here. All the guards he had downed were back on their feet, he hadn't been trying to kill them after all, and they like Lily were all regarding him with joy.

"So we thought as well, then they sent four men into the palace to steal our magic and destroy the Anima. You fell, or, were believed to have fallen defending it."

 _He turned me into a martyr._ Mystogan realized. The entire time he had been gone, he had assumed his father had blamed him, as was right, and had him declared a traitor.

No. Instead, Faust turned his son into a martyr and used his 'death' to raid the peaceful lands of Ferven, securing draftees for the army and fertile farming ground to bolster their supplies. He had probably even spun Prince Jellal's tragic death trying to save the Anima as a way to get more support for research in rebuilding the project.

His name had been used as an excuse to further the cause of war. War he had wanted, and tried, to stop by leaving Edolas and taking the Anima piece with him. Mystogan had never felt this kind of fury before. Yes, he had felt angry, but never like this. Like everything he had never wanted in his life was being presented as dedicated to him. Every war crime, every atrocity since he had left...had been as good as committed in his name and in his memory.

"That...is a complete and utter lie." He said in a flat, neutral tone, meeting the gazes of the men and finally Pantherlily himself. "I was not attacked, nor kidnapped. I destroyed the Anima myself and ran away. I was tired of the warmongering and the cost of using the Anima." He hefted Ten Commandments, ready to defend and move should their attitude towards him change with his revelation-

"It is true then." One guard, a younger one said face falling. "The Anima...converts actual lives into magic?"

"And when it is tapped, they die. Yes." Mystogan would have loved to break the news more gently, but he was on a time limit. "The lacrima they just brought through is the inhabitants of the town where I lived, and the people who took me in after I left Edolas, destroying the Anima behind me. You look and see years worth of magic power, easy lighting and heat and plenty of fuel for your vehicles." The spear in his hands hummed as he drew on more of its power. "I see thousands of innocent people who do not deserve to die victims of Faust's bloodlust. So you, soldiers in the Edolas army, will have to tell me here and now where you stand. Because if you stand with the madman who led you through carnage, and built his kingdom with the bones and ashes of the deceased...then you stand against me."

Pantherlily and the soldiers looked at Mystogan. The Exceed commander appeared deep in thought, studying his face carefully.

"And if we stand with you?" This...was not something Mystogan was counting on hearing and he looked at Pantherlily, shocked into silence for a moment. Then he shifted his gaze to the other soldiers that surrounded them.

They saluted.

"We are with Prince Jellal!"

"We shall follow where you lead, no matter the cost."

"Down with Faust!"

Mystogan had a slow, sinking feeling that he would regret being found by Pantherlily and brought back from the dead in the eyes of Edolas. But he couldn't spare more thought for it right now.

He tightened his grip on the haft of his new spear.

"Then keep up."


	36. Mistaken Identity

_**Pantherlily has found Mystogan.**_

 _ **Pantherlily and his division have changed sides.**_

 _Well that changes my plans. And officially changes what we're doing here from a coup to a mutiny._

 **:Tutor has found his ally. We flee:** I told Cubellios, who ducked one attacker, casually swatting him out of the air with her tail as we sped by. The jetpack toting guards might be more steady in the air than Cubellios, at least while hovering, but they were not nearly as maneuverable as she was.

 **:Should we rejoin him?:**

 **:No. He said to find the iron wyrm:** Which was what he had said word for word, but I did feel as though we should focus instead on finding our guild and people.

Magic was drawn to magic. When a Dragon Slayer jostled the lacrima, the wizards would snap back into their proper forms but the civilians wouldn't. Not unless they had enough magic to react to the outside stimuli.

 **:You are hesitant:**

 **:We should scout where the rest of our people are being held captive:** That was what I wanted to do after all. I wouldn't be able to wake them by myself, not unless Wendy, Natsu or Gajeel came with me.

 **:I understand you require one of the wyrms to free your captives:**

 **:Yes...:**

 **:Then logically, we should find the iron wyrmling as tutor said, and find the magic prison with him. That way, all may be found and freed at once:**

 _...I hate logic._

Cubellios correctly interpreted my resigned sigh as agreement and we made for the city.

There wasn't fighting in the streets, but there was definite unrest.

" _Point me; Gajeel Redfox."_

The kunai I had leftover from my fight spun around my finger by the ring on the end. It pointed straight and unerringly for the higher ground of Faustian.

Then a massive glacier appeared out of nowhere.

 _Gray's alright! Yay!_

There also came a soft vibration from my rune slate.

My clones were finished setting their traps.

 _Ooh, this is gonna be fun!_

-vVv-

Edolas was a war based city. The army was used to reacting swiftly and appropriately to attack, in any form at a moment's notice. Conquerors were not popular, by any stretch of the imagination.

The well trained army of Edolas was however, at a loss of what to do when they went to their stations and found them...altered.

The lookout posts on the walls were painted with cheerful colors and cartoonish images of animals in soft pastels, much like a nursery. The telescopes and binoculars had all been rimmed with black paint which somehow made everyone who put them to their eyes look like raccoons and pandas. And, when they tried to send someone out to question what was going on...they found the door had not only been locked behind them, but it had also been rigged to spray the one attempting to open it with sneezing powder.

Rations had been laced with some drug to cause hiccups. Lavatories sang to the occupants.

The halls were filled with trip wires, smoke grenades and paint bombs. Spare uniforms were filled with some substance that caused a violent purple rash on the skin. Weapons lockers were filled with a strange, sticky brightly colored foam. One lab had been raided and was spewing hallucinatory gas, neutralizing more than 20 men in it's innocuous yellow fumes.

Mystogan couldn't be more proud.

"What is happening?" Pantherlily demanded, tail starting to lash with irritation.

"My student is making her escape." He replied with a rueful smile. "Nothing disrupts guards quite like pure chaos."

"One child did all of this?"

"One child raised by Fairy Tail." He corrected, glancing out the window and spying a large purple winged snake with a small figure on it's back, aiming for the city. They were skillfully avoiding any guard that tried to stop them, but not aggressive in their defense. He felt his blood pressure spike when a blast that would have sent both snake and girl to the unforgiving ground barely missed. "You have a way to communicate with your men?"

"We're all on a comm channel together."

"Contact them and tell them to stop trying to shoot Fae out of the sky!" He didn't have a lot of charge left on his air staff but he would burn through all of it in a heartbeat if he had to get to her quickly.

"Hey, Mystogan! Don't worry about them, they're more than good enough in the air to keep from getting hit." A cheerful voice sounded from above and he looked up to see Fae, standing on the ceiling with no apparent regard for gravity, priming a chandelier to fall.

The S-Class mage glanced from Fae, to the shrinking figure of Fae in the sky...then back to...Fae?

"What did you do?"

"By this point, it's a question of what didn't I do!" She replied, winding a small spool of thread through the final screw of the chandelier as a trigger and walked down the side of the wall. "And I'm not Fae. I'm an identical temporary construct with all of her knowledge and skill, but not nearly as much magic, or even a fraction of the durability. One solid hit, and poof! I'm gone."

 _I will have to have words with her...She said she wasn't going to try the clone spawning function without supervision._

"I will have a talk with her about that later. Right now, I need a way out of the palace for myself and Pantherlily's squad." She grinned, rigging her string to a rug.

"Nobody step on that." All the men following them took a large step back away from the girl. "Anyhoo, bossman. A way out for our friends..." Her eyes went vacant for a moment in a familiar expression. It seemed the clones were identical down to having the same magical ability to 'read' facts about the world around them.

"No one's touched the servant tunnels. You won't be able to get a lot of people through very quickly. Not through any one tunnel at least. But there is one safe way to reach them from every floor. By the way, Mr Pantherkitty, how can we pass word to our guild members who is an ally and who isn't? The fighting has already started in the city." Mystogan could tell that his friend had questions. Many of them. But he focused on the immediate need and what they could do right now.

"My men are law enforcement in civilian areas, and the air squads on patrol in the air."

The latter of which had stopped trying to attack Fae and were instead departing the palace airspace.

"Good, could you get them started on evacuating civilians then? We've got two angry Dragon Slayers and a pissed off Celestial Spirit Mage coming in fast and when they get here, things are gonna explode." The clone tilted her head. "Actually, things are gonna explode sooner than that. Our decoy Sugarboy and Hughes just got discovered."

"You made decoys of them?" _She really went above and beyond even my expectations._

"The real ones are tied up in what's left of the amusement park. And seriously, what is it with the gosh dang park? What kind of person needs a palace so big that you can fit a whole theme park inside it?"

 _If they're tied up, that means she fought and defeated them..._

Mystogan was torn between being extremely proud of her, and feeling horrified that she had needed to face two army commanders alone.

"So-Oh boy..." The clone's face went very still. "You will want to leave. Quickly. Sugar-clone is going to drain Rosa Espada to trap her division in the ground. She...might, kinda, sorta, absolutely definitely compromise a large section of palace foundation in the process..." Her face cleared with a brightness and manic energy and she giggled. "Hey Mystogan, I destroyed my first battlefield!"

The mage grabbed the clone and towed her along, followed by Pantherlily and the guards.

"Right. Ok. Just get us out of the palace without getting caught by one of your traps. We'll talk about this later."

He wasn't even twenty yet, but he suspected he would start seeing grey hairs sooner rather than later because of this girl.

And yet, seeing her smile, even in the chaos and danger they were in, he couldn't really begrudge her that fact. She was safe, alive and finding ways to laugh even in their battle.

-vVv-

Lucy, sitting in the front seat beside Edo-Natsu, saw the walls coming closer and closer and closer by the minute. There was already a large plume of smoke or something coming from inside...

"Is that from fire or dust, Natsu?" The Dragon Slayer was suffering in the back seat, even with Wendy powering a low level Troia spell to keep him from falling unconscious in his misery.

"Dust." He groaned, covering his eyes after his brief glance out the window.

"Silly, Lushy, we're bringing the fire! They can't start burning without us!" Normally, Lucy would have wanted to wring Happy's neck for mispronouncing her name. She knew he did it on purpose. But they had some important business to attend to.

"I won't be able to take you all the way in." Edo-Natsu told Lucy. "The Iron Squadron's got a fast response Legion team primed for whenever they see me or my car. I need enough distance to be able to get away."

Lucy then had a crazy idea.

She had been getting them more and more often since joining the guild. But the disturbing thing was she was starting to see them as a reasonable solution instead of a last resort.

"Legions are those big flying things they used to try and take out your guild hall, right?"

"Yeah." He was looking at her a little warily. It was odd to see some of the differences between Edo-Natsu and the face she was now so familiar with.

Edo-Natsu's eyes were...different. It had been bothering her the whole time, but only now that she was getting a good look at him did she see it. Edo-Natsu had purely human eyes. Natsu's pupils were more oblong, like a snake or lizard. His skin was a bit rougher and so was his voice.

 _He's the son of a dragon, so his eyes would be different from using his magic as long as he has. And he has skin more like dragon scales than a normal person. And he is normally breathing fire. That has to have had some long term effects on the vocal chords._

Overall, it was more...wrong than she had originally thought it would be to see someone who was Natsu but not.

Lucy looked back at Wendy.

"If you didn't have to worry about them, could you take us up to the wall?"

"I guess-what are you doing?!" Lucy unbuckled herself and opened the window.

"Kill your speed once I'm out there, and don't make any sudden moves!" She called over the scream of the wind. "I've got something that can cover us as we get closer!" She slung her key ring over her wrist and reached around for the handhold on the side of the car.

 _If he's got handholds on the side of his Magi-mobile, this can't be the first time someone has done something like this._

Living and working in Fairy Tail made you stronger in a lot of different ways. That was how Lucy managed to hold herself against the side of the car and stretch her hand out to the top. There were other handles there and she'd need them for her spirit to use as footing. She sensed the car slow slightly and grinned.

It seemed even Edo-Natsu could guess what she needed.

She shifted a particular key into her palm.

 _Sagittarius. We need some cover. It'll be a bit of a tricky crossing._

She could already see the Legion that Edo-Natsu had mentioned was lifting off from a high platform.

"Open, Gate of the Archer." Lucy called out into the wind, feeling as though the words should have been blown back down her throat. She focused on the gate to be as close and low to the top of the car as she could manage it.

Saggitarius appeared on the roof, quickly wedging his front foot into the handheld as additional support.

"Ready to serve, ma'am!" He said, lifting his bow.

"Great! We need big, ugly and flying to either come down, or not have enough time to line up a shot." Her spirit turned, sharp eyes finding his target.

"Understood!"

And the bolts started to fly with unerring accuracy and speed. They would be no more than pinpricks to the massive creature, but the men piloting it on its back were not nearly as protected. They started to take cover and the Legion veered off course.

Lucy slapped the side of the car, getting their drivers attention.

"Let us worry about them, get us to the wall!" Once Natsu was back in action on solid ground, taking care of that thing for good would be a piece of cake. And the people actively assailing the wall and city would be a bigger priority than a fleeing vehicle. Or that was the plan.

If it didn't work out like that, then they'd have to improvise.

"Lucy!" Carla called. "Legions fly by inflating a sac in their chest cavity with superheated gas to give them lift!"

"You hear that?" Lucy asked Saggitarius.

"The chest is the easiest target because it is the biggest. It will take some trial and error to find the correct location!"

 _Ok, so shooting it down probably won't happen unless he can majorly up his impact and find the right spot._ Lucy poured more magic into her bond with Saggitarius, letting him use her own magic as his own. His arrows grew noticeably larger and flew faster than ever.

"Aim for the wings and tail!" Wendy cried. "It may be airborne because of its gas reserves, but if it can't steer, it can't chase anything!"

"Changing targets to the wings." The horse like spirit reported, the bolts shifting to one side of the beast. It roared as they found their mark and the beast began to list slightly in the air, turning in a slight curve as it struggled to compensate for the new handicap. It's riders were already moving to try and patch the holes in the wings with prosthetic skin, but they had to be careful to not get riddled with arrows themselves.

And all the while, the walls were getting closer.

"You're doing great, Saggitarius! Keep it up!"

"You people are insane!" Edo-Natsu called, but he was grinning. "Hang onto your everything! We're making the last leg at max speed!"

Even as Lucy hung on for dear life, winding her whip through the handles as an extra measure of security, she couldn't help but notice that with a grin like what he was sporting, Edo-Natsu looked much more like her guildmate.

 _There you are._

Though even Natsu had been unsettled by something in the Edolas Fairy Tail guild hall. He had approached a white haired girl standing with Edo-Mira and Edo-Elfman and spoken like he knew her and seemed...resigned and sad when she didn't recognize him. Happy however had been crushed. But Lucy could have sworn she saw tears shining in that girl's eyes as she left the room with her siblings.

 _I wonder if Mira and Elfman back home had a sister...I've never heard about her if they did._ But that was not really a surprise. If they were still grieving her, then talking about her, remembering her, would bring more pain than solace. That was why she only wrote letters to her mother and never actually spoke of her.

One bump almost made Lucy loose her grip and she continued to cling to the side of the car.

"Watch your driving, Flamehead!"

"Now you sound like Lucy!"

-vVv-

Carla, seated inside the magi-vehicle, felt her heart pounding with fear.

She had been seeking her visions for some information about Legions to help their approach to Faustian. What she had seen instead brought with it a powerful sensation of doom and foreboding.

A vague shape, massive, claws, jaws, teeth, wings, tail. And so much danger. Such a terrible threat...

She knew from Wendy's descriptions what a dragon looked like...But in all the years she had never seen or heard of one of the creatures. At least, not in Earthland...

But here...here there were no native Dragon Slayers. They were dangerous because they were unaffected by the Anima. Their magic was too wild and unpredictable to be corralled by the device.

 _Can it be...no...no there cannot be a dragon here. I've never seen anything to suggest that there is one!_ Not until now at least.

Extalia had assigned her a mission. Her and presumably all the other younglings and eggs they had planted in Earthland.

Find and kill the Dragon Slayers.

The tomcat didn't seem to be aware of this mission. The kitten, Frosch, didn't seem to realize the truth either. That he had been sent and told to kill the human who was now his closest friend. Only she remembered...and she had refused to go through with it. There was no point in doing so. Dragon Slayers would never go to Edolas, they would have no reason to.

But the other Exceed would not see it the same way. They would only see Dragon Slayers. Threats that needed to be neutralized.

Her paws clenched in her lap and Carla pressed her lips together to keep her teeth from showing. She pressed her back into the seat to prevent her fur from rising and letting others know about her distress.

"Carla, are you ok?" _Curse you, you meddlesome tomcat._ The blue cat had been monitoring Lucy through the window, ready to snap to and catch her should her grip falter. But he was now looking at her with such concern...

"I am well. Just worried." There. A lie and a truth together would be harder to catch.

"You shouldn't. We'll be ok. Look." Happy pressed a paw to the window. "Gray and Erza are already fighting. They've knocked down part of the city wall, we can just drive right in!"

"They've what!?"

-vVv-

 _I was doing something in the guild hall. And then it all goes black...and now I'm wherever this is and someone stole my shirt. Again._

Gray had definitely had better mornings. Erza had been talking to him about maybe taking Jellal with him on a job as Mystogan.

" _If he's gonna be playing tag with the real Mystogan, then wouldn't it make more sense for you to bring him along on a job Erza? You're S-class, not me. Mystogan has never taken a job on my level since his first year in the guild."_ This had apparently been the wrong thing to say. Gray suspected Erza had suckerpunched him and made the arrangements without his consent.

But figuring that out could wait until after they were back in Magnolia.

Spying an unfamiliar planet in the sky, the Ice Make Wizard revised his thoughts.

 _Make that back in Earthland. Cause Caius 4 isn't supposed to be visible during the day._

"Hey, flasher! Get your head back on the ground!" Gajeel's roar, so very like Natsu's, triggered the completely unconscious response of throwing a bunch of snow in his general vicinity.

"Ice Make Avalanche!" An angry sputtering roar told Gray his move had been right on target.

"You don't get to order me around!"

"But I do!" Two of Erza's swords flew through the air, impacting the weak points in some kind of mechanical armor and causing its arms to fall off, causing the two men piloting it from inside to scream in panic. "Work out your issues later, Gray!"

"I'll never have that kind of time!" The glint in Erza's eye told him that he had better stop pushing his luck. He grumbled under his breath, muttering a spell (Ice Make Rink) and slapping both hands on the ground to put a slick layer of ice underneath the entire charging army.

They tumbled to the ground like ten-pins.

They were going for non-lethal fights primarily. Erza was using the flats of her blades, Gajeel was using fists instead of blades and Gray was taking his cues from them. But...

He automatically checked behind them.

It looked like the backlash from Erza destroying one of the larger robot-suits had passed into the back wall and destabilized it. And his avalanche had pushed the whole wall outward, causing a large gap. It showed the group of about 100 men that had been coming towards a smaller gate from behind.

"Incoming from behind!" He warned them shortly.

"Got it." The blur of yellow-gold magic surged by. _Ok, so there's Jellal._ "Keep on those in front." Gray didn't stop to watch the user of Heavenly Body magic simply tear the attempted pincer apart. He had missed him, and someone else in his initial sweep. Simon had been accompanying Jellal to his therapy sessions, had also been peripherally involved in the conversation of finding Jellal his first job as 'Mystogan'.

 _Speaking of Simon, where is he?_

The large gentle giant was mostly tucked out of the way, touching his jaw and false eye and grimacing.

"You ok, man?"

"My prosthetics feel weird here." He replied, straightening. "Lost my depth perception for a second." Which meant he hadn't been fighting to avoid friendly fire on his allies.

"Well there's plenty more bad guys coming in. We're not greedy." The ones that he had knocked down and scattered with the large sheet of glassy ice were regrouping for a second assault. Gajeel, his fist turning into a hefty iron beam, cracked the ice into splinters. Gray took his previous creation, hands coming together into the strong seal Ur had showed him.

"Ice Make: Barrier!" He imagined it first. All the sharp edges Gajeel had formed with his blow shifting, rising into a jagged, glacier-like mountain range, cutting off the ways they could attack and only leaving them a few narrow clear channels. Erza and Gajeel placed themselves at two of the openings, the latter gnawing on the weapons of defeated enemies like they were crackers or something.

"Can you make me an outpost? I need to see who we're fighting if I'm going to do anything."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Just a height that I can get a good view from."

 _Not very specific...Oh well. Can't blame me then._ The more detail Gray had to work with when he used magic, the better his end result was.

In the end, he decided to simply work some stairs into his already present barrier, weaving up to an alcove that gave a view of their entire battlefield.

"What are you planning Simon?" Erza asked, requiping some new swords as she waited for her opponents to come closer.

"Psychological warfare." He replied dryly before hurrying up the stairs to his outpost.

Jellal returned, not even looking winded.

"Pincer move is gone but we could still get flanked through that opening." There was a fast moving plume of dust approaching from the distance, but no other signs of approaching enemies.

"Gray, stand guard back there, give us long distance support, and watch the opening. We will want an easy way out of the city should we be unable to hold this position." Erza spoke quickly and firmly. Taking charge easily and naturally. "Jellal, take the third path, people will be funneling through quickly." Gray could hear them approaching.

Normally, they would be pressing forward. Gajeel's quick update was that this city and its king had attacked Fairy Tail and Magnolia. But normally, they had more people to work with than just five wizards. They needed back up and time for the civilians to get out of the way. And that was Mystogan's plan and it was his plan they were following.

 _He said wait for backup. Salamander's back up._

Meaning that as soon as Natsu got here, Gajeel was going on the offensive, with or without more support.

Gray spied a faint grey mist trailing down from Simon's tower. He was producing it from a dark violet magic circle.

 _I've never seen that kind of Darkness Magic before._

Gray moved to the ruined wall and clambered up to give him a better view of the empty land outside the wall. There were scorch marks, craters and unconscious men everywhere. Jellal had been working among them for maybe a minute.

 _And Erza wanted him to take something other than an S-Class quest._

The next fifteen minutes were involved with taking down the grunts as they made their way through Gray's maze of broken ice and several deep gaps. And something about their faces seemed different too. They seemed to be...terrified as they came through. A large number of them even retreated before they engaged, screaming in blind panic.

Gray glanced up at Simon and saw his face still set in concentration.

 _Darkness Magic._

 _Psychological warfare._

 _You're making them so scared of us, not even half of them are making it through the barrier._

Gray hastily recalibrated his opinion of Simon.

Yes, the man was among the gentlest of people he had ever met. But to be able to use magic to inspire that kind of fear meant that he not only had to have felt it himself, but refused to allow it to control him.

Because he was looking for it, Gray saw Simon's face shift slightly. A complication?

Then something large smashed into the barrier from the other side, creating a gap between Gajeel and Jellal.

The men who charged through were screaming, but in defiance and determination.

"Ice Make Cannon!" Three shots delayed them long enough for Gajeel to sweep them down. But they didn't seem to go down quite as easily as a normal person should. They were insane, fighting and struggling through injuries that should have stopped them. And then Gray saw something large and...grey that distracted him from following that thought.

Massive tentacles were winding their way throughout the entire barrier, tearing it down piece by piece.

 _As soon as that falls, we're sitting ducks for long distance strikes._

Erza seemed to realize the same thing as she lunged at the tentacles with vicious strokes, cutting through two of them in as many seconds.

Gray reformed his barrier where he could, twisting some of the paths closed to trap some men inside and remove them from the fight. He sent spikes of frigid ice at the tentacles as well, but they seemed to be incredibly tough.

 _This is different. They're adapting to us._ A smart enemy would, but this felt like more than just common grunts. The men who had blindly charged had slightly different uniforms then the first waves.

Gray turned his cannon to the walls where men were falling from above. Suicide dives with no visible parachutes, just screaming...

He caught sight of their faces and something in him recoiled. Something was wrong with those men. Very wrong.

"Simon! Kill the fear, try something else!" He yelled.

Fear made people react in different ways. It looked like these people had been forced to choose fight instead of flight. And then the way back had been blocked.

There came a screech from behind. Arrows flew through the air to down several of the berserkers. A magi-mobile skidded to a halt beside the open wall, the door burst open to reveal two Dragon Slayers and their feline partners. Lucy landed, shaking her whip out, her archer spirit already sending more arrows in to keep Erza's path clear as she tore a fourth tentacle apart.

 _Fourth? Just four?_

No...She probably had cut them multiple times before, but even as Gray watched, they were starting to grow back. Erza Requip-ed into her Flame Empress armor and let her superheated blade do her talking.

That tentacle didn't grow back, but something large bellowed from the otherside of the barrier.

 _Cauterize them. Keep em from growing back._

"Natsu! Get in there and roast the squid freak!" Wendy was clearly trying to wake Natsu up, but he was out of it. "Now isn't the time to take a nap, jackass! Snap out of it and get to it-aw forget it. Lucy, cover me!"

"You got it!"

Gray dismissed his bazooka like gun and charged for the severed end of one tentacle that flopped, reaching for something to destroy. The end oozed black liquid and was already starting to sprout new flesh. He was calling up magic, but not trying to shape it this time.

Now, he just wanted something cold. As cold as he could possibly make it.

The air steamed around him as he grabbed the end of the tentacle with both hands.

" _Frostbite!"_ Pliant, flexible flesh went inert and brittle. Another shriek of pain from beyond the barrier. "Ice Make Sword!" The blade cut into the flesh of another appendage, but didn't sever it all the way. Erza had showed him the right motions for when he used a sword, much like Bisca had taught him marksmanship for his missile weapons. But he just didn't have the right amount of talent or practice time with a blade to be as deadly with one as Titania was.

The half disabled tentacle managed to slap him back. His magic absorbed a lot of the damage, flaring around him like unseen, living armor, but his head still rang like a bell from the impact.

 _Someone's gotta take out the main body of this thing. We're hurting it, but it can still tear down the shield. Just not as quickly._

Hands were grabbing the side of his heads, something dark blue swam before his eyes. There was a distant ringing in his ears-

Until suddenly it was gone and replaced by the sounds of the battle.

Gray blinked up at Wendy and she shot him a smile.

"You're good to go! Don't forget to take another X-ball, you're feeling a little low." _Right...Wendy's a doctor. I managed to forget that._

"Gray, with me!" Jellal's call got the Ice Make wizard's attention as he seemed to materialize beside him. "I have a spell that can take down even something this big. But I need you to hold it still for me, can you do that?" Gray snorted.

"You're new. So I'm not gonna hold that question against you."

"Good. Grab on. We're pushing through to the other side."

-vVv-

Moving at the speeds at which Heavenly Body users normally did, Gray decided, was not for him. He was no Natsu, he didn't get sick easily, but he wasn't used to moving that darn fast.

The source of the tentacles was some kind of huge octopus with way too many limbs. Rubbery grey skin, blind, crazed eyes and a voice that shrieked in pain from whatever Erza was doing to its tentacles.

It seemed to grow larger as they watched.

 _That just isn't right._ Something more than it being something between an octopus and a squid and it being on dry land in a large metropolitan area.

Gray put his hands together, calling on all the ice just behind him. If he could reuse old material, he would save a lot of power and Wendy was right, he was in need of a little pick-me-up. But this he could still do.

"Ice Make Net!"

Ice was inherently an immobile substance. But adding magic to anything could change it's use dramatically. By thinking of it as a net and capturing something in it, it gave his crystal blue ice an odd sense of give, thus letting him immobilize even creatures without a skeleton.

The lines of blue ice grew rapidly around the monster, merging with the recycled material Gray called from their maze. Most of the foot soldiers had retreated from their own massive shock trooper-

He smelt something weird.

He wasn't Natsu. He didn't have a Dragon Slayer's nose, but something smelt weird.

He also wasn't Lucy, he didn't have her observational skills.

But he still saw a glitter of glass shards on the ground and a bent, gnarled old man who looked far too pleased at the sight of the pandemonium-

Part of the net burst in a spray of ice fragments.

 _It's definitely still growing. Don't know how, but it is._

Gray shifted his stance.

 _Ice is rigid and unforgiving. It all comes from the same structure though. And ultimately, it forms when something stops moving._

"Ice Make: _Hypothermia._ "

The air itself crystalized around the still thrashing monster. Thousands upon thousands of barely visible ice crystals clinging to the flexible creatures' limbs, weighing them down, the air filled with the sound like someone trying to run through a snow field. Only multiplied by two thousand. The ice crystals were rubbing against one another, causing the grating sound and having the desired effect of slowing the monster. It was spending and more energy with every move. And something that big had to use a lot of energy if it was trying to move this much.

 _Hope that's enough for you, Jellal._ He didn't seem to mind that the thing was only severely handicapped instead of completely paralyzed. Jellal wove through the now sluggish tentacles, surrounded by the yellow aura of his magic, effortlessly carrying him high above the creature.

Gray tightened his spell around it as it grew yet again, keeping it slow and it's tentacles unable to rise to its own defense.

" _Heavenly Body: Jiu Leixing."_

Nine different objects appeared as Jellal cancelled his speed spell above his target. They looked like swords at first, but altered to more resemble long spears instead. Then with a gesture, he sent them down, all aiming for the main body of the devil-octopus.

The thing was so huge that when it was hit by Jellal's spell, the constructed weapons vanished completely into it's body.

It was like watching a waterballoon get punctured.

Grey ooze exploded out of all nine places, and the thing gave a final shudder before going still.

Gray only realized Jellal was still subject to gravity in the nick of time, the ice formerly holding the world's most disgusting specimen of calamari reforming into a smooth slide to redirect Jellal's momentum safely and keep him from impacting the ground too hard.

Could he have taken it? Probably. But he was a guild mate now and they did still need him.

The man he had spotted at first was now looking disappointed. Not like a champion or a hope in battle had been defeated, but rather like an experiment hadn't had the outcome he had wanted.

It gave Gray the creeps.

"Changelings! Forward in the name of King Faust-"

"It's Prince Jellal!"

 _What?_

Whatever the words meant (Prince Jellal? Seriously?) they were spreading like wildfire, the focused attack dissolving into confused panic. The faint grey aura of Simon's magic lightened and began to spin gently, heightening their confusion. And there was a lot of that going around.

Gray let Erza and Gajeel charge forward, downing another X-ball to restore his reserves, seeing Jellal do the same.

"Nice hit." He acknowledged.

"Nice improvisation in slowing it down instead of trying to make it stop moving." They caught their breath as the Requip Mage and Iron Dragon Slayer wreaked havoc, the area around them kept relatively clear by Lucy's spirit's arrows and her whip cracking with impressive precision to keep any stragglers far away from Wendy, who was still trying to get Natsu back into fighting condition after his trip.

"Why are they calling you prince and how do they even know your name?"

"Those are excellent questions that I hope will be answered later."

"Fair enough."

"Hey!" Lucy's voice broke through the hubbub with an accompanying crack on her whip. "Natsu! You have something to be doing, don't you? Get up!"

"Aw hell yeah I'm fired up now!" The salmon haired wizard cheered, rushing straight into the fray.

"No! The lacrima! You and Happy have to find the lacrima where everyone else is!" But it was no good. Natsu was well and truly lost in the fight in about three seconds flat.

The 'Changelings' lived up to their name, several others of them also transformed into monsters, all larger and stronger than their natural counterparts, but also clearly in some sort of pain or with some kind of deformity.

The hunched over man Gray had spotted earlier was hurrying away, distributing some vials to the men around him.

When the men drank the vials and began to change, Gray knew he had found his target.

They weren't here to kill these people. But anything that turned you from yourself into something else ran the same kind of risk as Take-Over magic. The shape you assumed could dominate your mind and control you, even after you got your body back. He didn't know the numbers of people who successfully reclaimed their old lives after such an experience, but they were very low.

Gray had to stop that man before he increased the body count even more.

-vVv-

Byro hobbled away quickly, mind spinning with what he had seen.

Jellal was back.

The boy was meant to have been dead for many years, they had all agreed that having him be assasinated nobly defending the Anima was the best way to keep their country unified behind Faust.

 _If Knightwalker sees him, we could lose her. We_ _will_ _lose Pantherlily._

The stupidly noble, naively idealistic young prince had made an excellent martyr, but as a resurrected hero, he would bring nothing but trouble. Especially since he had just handily demonstrated that he possessed magic power. They had had no notion that living in Earthland could alter their people's bodies in such a way to allow that. A personal, never ending supply of magic power...

Byro clawed for the comm that all the commanders bore, then altered the frequency so his words would reach one man and one alone.

"The boy is back with Earthland wizards, Dragon Slayers and his own magic power."

There came a sharp inhale of breath from the other end of the comm.

" _...He's come back to take what I've worked for..."_ The familiar tones of paranoia and madness rang in Faust's voice, but with considerably more force than ever before. Byro restrained his amused chuckles.

"What does my king command?"

" _Reroute all available power to Dorma Anim. Direct the city supply to it, all of it, right away, right now! I want it ready for deployment within the hour!"_

The old king's voice cracked faintly, trembling with emotion. Byro inclined his head almost respectfully to the device in his hand, trying not to dance a jig in his glee.

Dorma Anim had been forbidden by law for years and years. He had been forced to seal the project before it's testing was complete, it was deemed too wasteful. He would finally get to see the fearsome armor in action to serve its purpose:

Defeat Dragon Slayers and prepare them for harvest.

"As my king wishes."


	37. Code ETD

Seeing a city in turmoil was never a pleasant thing. You could literally see all the lives being uprooted, routines being disrupted. People were running everywhere, some were panicking and in hysterics. From Cubellios's back, I could see some people in uniforms were directing traffic.

 _ **They are being directed to Legion stables on the other side of town in order for them to be evacuated to safety.**_

But I also saw some people who weren't running with the intent to escape...

Even as I watched, one of the men broke through a window and ducked into the store beneath.

 _Looters._

There were always some scumbags who would try and take advantage of a situation like this if given the opportunity. Things would devolve to anarchy, hurting a lot of innocent civilians if the incident sparked something.

I looked towards the destruction where I knew my guildmates were...then back down at the looters.

 _I refuse to experience spectator apathy._

 **:Wait, we stop the carrion before we go on:**

Cubellios pumped her wings once, arching her back up, then tucking her wings in to slice through the air at incredible speed. She only snapped her wings open at the last second with a loud crack that definitely drew a lot of attention. I sprang from her back, my foot planting itself securely in the skull of the perp who had broken into the store front.

With all the momentum from Cubellios' dive and my own leap behind the attack, he went down like a dropped curtain.

The second man about to follow his buddy inside froze in place, too stunned to do anything but gape at me.

 _Some weird kid dropping out of the sky and taking down a grown man with one blow. Yeah, that would surprise anyone._

I gave him a not very friendly smile.

"You weren't planning on taking anything that wasn't yours, were you? Cause that would be rude. And stupid."

"It's none of your business, kid!"

"Since it isn't your shop, it isn't yours either." My gaze slid behind him. "It would be very stupid to rob a store in front of witnesses. Especially the one right behind you."

Cubellios, with her uncanny sense of timing, grew to a larger form and let the tip of her tongue flick the back of the man's neck. He jumped and whirled, hands coming up defensively-Then he froze upon seeing what was actually behind him.

The violet snake reared up, her muscles shifting slightly as she produced a cobra's hood around her head and neck. It made a menacing picture, especially since she was already about three times as large as the man. She hissed a threat in Parseltongue that involved swallowing the man after crushing his bones into jelly and liquifying his muscles with venom. (The language of serpents was such that all that could be described in one exquisite continuous sound, and they could still have enough breath leftover to add another two like it. Parseltongue actually had a lot of ways to threaten someone. Maybe even a bit more than it should.)

I grinned privately, whispering under my breath.

" _Cubellios, use Glare...!"_

The man simply seized up, going rigid and unmoving. Perfect paralysis without the threat of death like a basilisk. _Methinks I will have to do some thinking about how to work magic through Cubellios even more. It's already been extremely effective._

 **:hatchling, shall we dispose of the carrion?:** Cubellios inquired.

 **:Let the peacekeepers handle him. We must find Iron Wyrm:** I knew where they were now, but I needed someone in authority who would be a good enough person to handle the would-be thieves.

We got airborne again, but stayed low, searching for someone, anyone in a uniform.

In the discord below, one spot stood out sharply. Where others were reacting with fear, uncertainty and borderline panic, these people were organized. Their movements were efficient and the voice barking orders-

 _No way..._

-was uncannily familiar.

Tall, broad shoulders, but rawboned, too lean for his height, a heavy glare from a dark eye and a sightless blind one marred by a relatively recent scar tearing through the right side of his face, Simon, or Edo-Simon, was directing a small band of guards.

 _ **Simon is an army conscript.**_

That was what I had heard in the double echo upon first arriving in Edolas. Just by looking at him, I got the feeling he wasn't here of his own volition. Not in a uniform at least.

 _ **He is a low ranking but well respected officer. He will see to the looters.**_

This matter of fact certainty was all I needed to decide that this perfect stranger was trustworthy.

"Hey! Tall, dark and in charge, up here!" I waved both my hands as if I wasn't on a bright purple flying snake, hovering in a seemingly impossible act over the street. The single dark eye looked up at me with surprise that quickly changed to... resignation?

"Kid, what are you doing? Getta outta here." Several men around him whipped around and levelled their spears up at me. Cubellios let her jaws open slightly, just in case a quick acid bath was necessary. I merely sat back curiously.

"Seargent, Terrance Faerun is to be arrested on sight."

 _I did not expect this. Just what has my doppelganger been up to to warrant an arrest at our age?_ _Oh, I hope I get to meet her!_

 _On the other hand_ _, Terrance? That's a guy's name! Am I genderbent here? I'm too young to have one identity crisis, let alone two within a few weeks!_

 _ **Terra Faerun is female.**_

 _Oh good...that confusion would have been too much to handle in one day._

"Fine. Kid, report for official arrest once the city has been razed to the ground and sown with salt." Edo-Simon's tone was sharp, directed at me with a certain sarcasm that told me he not only didn't expect me to obey him, but he also had zero motivation to actually arrest me. Or Edo-me rather. I hadn't actually done anything...other than vandalize most of the palace, assault two higher ranking members of the army and not just lie down and ask to be sucked into a lacrima...Scratch that, by this country's standards, I had totally committed a bunch of heinous crimes.

I laughed a little at Edo-Simon's tone.

"Oh sorry, you must be looking for my alternate dimension self. I'm not Terrance. Actually, I'll probably be among the people razing the city, once the people are out of it at least. Anyway! You've got a bad case of looters about two streets thataway." I pointed in the appropriate direction, hand turned slightly to be ready to activate a shield spell to deflect any smart ideas in the form of magi-blasts from the soldiers below us. I cocked my head. "And another three brewing right now targeting the Common Bank, the guard house and the market."

There was a short timer going from when the first guard would open fire. I wanted to save magic, so I ran my other hand down Cubellios's neck, letting her know we had to keep moving and fast.

She pumped her wings in preparation for the ascent.

A guard just to the right of Edo-Simon charged his weapon.

Edo-Simon almost carelessly reached out and smacked the head of the weapon aside, making the blast go wide.

"Zuchen..." The single word, the guard's name, held a volume of meaning.

 _Do you not have something better to do than to open fire on a kid? Did this kid not just tell you that anarchy is starting to set in among the general populace? Is it not your job to maintain order? What are you doing?_

"Sir?"

"Market." _Now._

"Yes, sir."

The guard put up his weapon and signalled to two others in the ranks that had formed up protectively around Edo-Simon. The three of them hurried away. _Are they going in step?_

They were. They were running almost in perfect sync.

 _ **Edo-Simon's Battalion Pin allows a low level empathic field to connect those under his command to each other and to himself.**_

 _So...Mind control?_

 _ **Mind connecting. All the ties of loyalty and respect between him and his men are natural and well earned.**_

With a connection like that, he could not only spur them along, but also help them move more and more as one unit instead of a group of individuals. An incredibly effective ability for a battlefield commander.

Edo-Simon was also addressing another small group, sending them to the bank. The guard house, I noted, didn't receive a protective detail.

 _ **His scorn for his own uniform and what he represents as long as he wears it makes him not care about it. His priorities are securing supplies and funds for the rebuilding once this is over.**_

Which...was actually quite admirable.

Cubellios, sensing the shift in the air, was rising slowly into the air as opposed to quickly like I had originally thought would be necessary. We were still within easy ear-shot when Edo-Simon looked back at me.

His blind eye made my vision blur as the story of how he had lost it tried to hijack my present attention span. I saw a glimpse of an angry Knightwalker, a flash of pain from a clawed spear, a demotion from a higher position-

"The lacrima's on an island behind Extalia."

The location flared to life on my mental map of the area. Direction and distance as well as a calculation of how long it would take to get there. But I wasn't paying attention to that. I was focusing on what G2 was saying...

 _ **Get it out of my world before I have to watch more of my men die trying to keep it. Get rid of it. I don't want magic. Not at this cost.**_

Everything Edo-Simon meant behind the words poured through to me via G2's soft translation, even cast in his voice. And his inner voice sounded jaded, weary and sick of fighting.

 _You never wanted any of this in the first place, did you?_

I saw a draft, pulling him from his home when he was barely into manhood. I saw combats, hard won promotions, the bonds of love and trust that he forged with his men through shared hardships and effort. The command he slowly earned for himself...

All taken away when he voiced the same thought a young prince had some years ago:

Just stop the fighting. Let the war end.

Knightwalker had taken his eye and rank for questioning his orders, and for voicing that particular stance.

He was only supposed to be a rank and file grunt. But there weren't many soldiers in the army who didn't know that trusting Captain Simon Mikas would get you through something alive.

I wanted to hug him. Hug him because I could see everything and understand all the pain that he had lived through because of other people's greed and power lust...

But I didn't have time.

...Did I?

 _He has a city to evacuate, thousands of people he cares about to get to safety. And he had enough time to tell me where to go. Where the people are who are important to me._

 _I have enough time for this. And I always will._

 **:Wait for me:** I told Cubellios before jumping off her back and landing easily inspite of the thirty foot drop. To their credit, the soldiers didn't even twitch in shock.

"Please move." I asked them softly. I felt eyes on me, weighing, cautious, careful...

"Do it." Their commander's voice made them step aside smartly, leaving me a clear path to where the tall man stood.

I didn't waste any more time.

Faster than they could have reacted, I was up by Edo-Simon and giving him the biggest hug my smaller form could manage, squeezing with all the fervent desperation I had in me.

All the hope I had for saving everyone.

All the love I had for my friends who were still here.

And all the gratitude I felt for him giving me what I needed to save my family.

" _Thank you."_

He seemed shocked. Understandably so. He might know Edo-Fae, but I was a complete stranger hugging another rather threatening looking stranger. I didn't let the embrace go on for very long. Just long enough to convey what I wanted. Then I stepped back and jumped about ten feet straight into the air, letting Cubellios slide beneath me.

 _ **Natsu and Happy have split from the others and are searching for the lacrima to free Fairy Tail.**_ Searching. That meant they didn't have the first clue of where they were actually going.

 _Idiots. But you're my idiots._

Taking the fierce joy I felt at being able to help, of knowing exactly where to go and what to do, I cast a spell that seemed to come easier and easier every time I used it.

" _Expecto Patronum!"_ My silver-white owl Patronus soared alongside Cubellios, easily keeping pace with her blistering speed. I then gave it it's message.

"Natsu, follow me. Let's go save our guild!"

-vVv-

Moving through the palace had been a study in painful deja vu. And the city was just as agonizing if for an entirely different reason.

Mystogan had taken to the rooftops to avoid the press of the crowd beneath, but everyone who saw him was recognizing him. _This is why I wanted to wear my mask._

Pantherlily had shredded it.

" _If you are here, you are here as yourself. Not a masked stranger. Let the people know who fights for them."_

The issue was it wasn't the people of Edolas he was fighting for. It was his Fairy Tail guildmates. But they didn't seem to care about that. The cries of panic transitioned quickly to joy when he was spotted. A hopeful chant starting up in his wake.

But unlike what he had feared, he wasn't being called to protect Edolas.

" _Go save those people, Prince Jellal!"_

" _Down with the warmonger!"_

" _Down with Faust!"_

" _End the war!"_

" _Set us free!"_

" _Liberty! Liberty!"_

They were viewing him as a savior from Faust's regime. Anything would have been an improvement, after all. That and coupled with what Pantherlily had told him, about a news article explaining about the relationship between Earthland and Edolas, and what had actually been powering all their magical tools and weapons, Faust's reign was over. Even if they didn't manage to free their guild and defeat the army that stood against them, the people would not tolerate Faust any longer. And without the means to curb the revolt, down three-fourth of his army, on short magic supply and with his palace-fortress breached and in shambles, the mad king would be unseated from his throne within the week, if not sooner.

Mystogan only prayed that the people of Edolas wouldn't take his not staying with them too hard.

"Prince Jellal, you are leaving us behind." Pantherlily said in a chastising tone.

"I told you to see to the people's evacuation from the city. I'll be fine!" His sole focus was on regrouping with his guildmates, seeing how they fared and how to progress. Getting civilians out of their way, while a priority, was not as important to him as his guild. And once they got rolling, the evacuation would be needed on multiple levels. Natsu alone was good for leveling a half a town in a brawl. And that was when he was mostly having fun! Adding Erza, Gajeel and Gray to the mix would only multiply the damage.

Pantherlily was the only guard managing to maintain the grueling pace over the tricky terrain and be right beside Mystogan. The other men were strung out behind him, relying on their packs to make some jumps that Mystogan took with reckless abandon and long practice.

As his skill in free running had improved, he had needed to rely on his Air staff less and less. Now he hardly needed it at all save for the most arduous of obstacles. It was part of why he had been so amused at hearing what Fae had done with one of her first enchantments.

"No! That is not what I mean." A large, flat metal blade appeared before him. Pantherlily's sword. Which apparently shared a trait with Master Makarov in that it could grow to suit any need. In this case, to try and deter him from moving forward.

The loop on the end of one of his staves caught the sides of the guard as it grew and he flung himself forward, using the extra height to cross a difficult chasm between two buildings. He heard his old friend behind him activate his wings and cut the distance to catch him. His gaze was hard and unamused.

"You are going to be leaving Edolas again after dethroning your father. You will leave us in shambles!" _Yes...That._

Part of him did feel guilty that he was doing that. In spite of the years and his attachments to Earthland, Edolas was his homeland. It was hardly their fault that Faust had driven them to their present extremes.

"I will unmake the monarchy. But what happens to this city afterward ought to be the decision of those who live in it." He had thought that if they didn't have to run right away, he could organize a governing council to maintain order in place of a king.

"Jellal, what have you been doing? What changed you so much that you would simply abandon these people to fend for themselves?" The name sounded wrong. He hadn't been Jellal in so long...

"Lily. I can't explain it right now. Not how you deserve to hear it. But I have not been Prince Jellal in years. I don't think of myself as him either." He removed the Exceed's hand from his cloak. "I go by Mystogan now...And that name, who he is...is who I want to be. Who I never could be here." Someone who could actually do something when someone was in trouble or needed help. Someone who commanded respect for their skill, not because of a monopoly of magic power. He had only adopted the name 'Mystogan' after accepting Makarov's invitation to join the guild. Mystogan had been born when he accepted a Fairy Tail mark. That was his identity, who he was since being 'Prince Jellal' was no longer an option. He had been content to be the outlier, the ghost on the edge of their family, but part of it nonetheless.

Until a little girl point blank refused to fall asleep when he entered the guild hall. When she hadn't even bated an eye at his mask or mysterious reputation. Her unthinking trust and acceptance of him had subtly opened the rest of the guild to him. It had made him feel more attached to Fairy Tail as a whole than he had intended. To the point where he wanted selfishly to return to Earthland with them rather than stay in Edolas.

"I don't deny that this will cause havoc. It would have no matter how it was done. But this has to be finished. Now, before still more people die for no reason. Once my guild and the people of Magnolia are safe, I will do whatever I can to help. But only then."

Mystogan found his running rhythm again and took off running for the broken wall. Because of course they've already broken down the outer wall that had survived decades of war and siege. Another minor source of guilt...the property damage they would leave behind. He made a mental note to doubly and triply warn people off of trying to reuse the palace until Fae's traps had been found and unmade.

-vVv-

Pantherlily had chosen exile over duty when it meant he could save a young boy's life. His sense of what was right had overcome his loyalty to his home country. He knew what it was like to feel something so deeply that past ties became secondary and vastly less important than upholding that one right thing.

Seeing the boy he had rescued falling prey to that same terrible sense of morality gave him an odd sensation of both pride and grief.

Prince Jellal would have wanted to help, but would have his sense of duty overpower that desire. He would have bitten back the instinctive action of solving the problem, worrying about the aftereffects and repercussions.

'Mystogan' had the same idealistic desire to help. But he had the impulse to act in spite of high consequences and the drive to overcome the challenges that followed.

 _It seems that all the tutors and teachers you had here were useless._ _You had to die and be reborn to become the man I saw you could be._ Believing his prince had died had left Pantherlily in a daze for months. The boy he had saved and grown so fond of had died at the hands of assassins, penetrating even their innermost sanctuaries.

And now that he saw him again, back from the dead and grown into the man he had always known he could become. Skilled, compassionate and utterly dedicated to doing the right thing and damn the consequences. A true king who could lead the people of Edolas into an age of peace and prosperity. You could see that just by looking at him. He heard and saw the hope in the people's face as they watched their returned prince race to battle.

Losing him after regaining him for a short time would be devastating to the citizens.

 _Worry about the fallout later._ Pantherlily put aside the future ramifications and focused on following the cloaked young man as he charged straight for the thick of the fighting. _The conflict has to be settled. That means picking a side. And I choose his side._

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw three different figures, all flying, heading directly for Extalia. He recognized one shape as Mystogan's apprentice and her flying serpent, the strange girl who had seemingly dissolved into thin air with a wave and a laugh. It had been unsettling to see someone so nonchalant about the prospect of their existence ending. The other was vaguely humanoid, but with the distinctive wings of an Exceed's Aria bearing him.

And the third wasn't distinct at this distance. It was just glowing brightly and soaring with unnatural grace.

Whether they were making for Extalia or the lacrima just behind it, Pantherlily didn't really have the time to care.

" _Commander, this is Sergeant Mikas. I've just been informed Byro is unleashing his Changelings."_ After Erza had dismissed Simon Mikas from her unit, Pantherlily had taken him on. He was in charge of all his men in the city right now. And if he was reporting that...That was news alright...Terrible news.

Byro's fascination with alchemy, the one art that remained unaffected even in the dearth of magic energy around them, had led to him forming a personal squad. The Changelings were handpicked by him, and all were practiced in taking inhuman forms for combat. They had to be replaced frequently, far too often for Pantherlily to ever consent to letting any of his men go to Byro for even a single day. After a handful of short transformations, or even a single lengthy one, the men either were left drained and bereft of any strength or sanity, or dead. They would not stop until their enemy was dead. And if there wasn't anyone left, they would turn their attention on the civilians.

"Have the people been withdrawn from the combat zone?"

" _In progress."_

"Move on doubletime. More Earthland wizards will be entering combat shortly and the damage will only spread. Spread word to the rest about the situation." He had told his officers about his change in allegiance, but not the men. But now, they would need to give some explanation as to why they were fighting their own should the Changelings go out of control.

" _Understood."_

Pantherlily put on still more speed, trying to catch up with Mystogan before it was too late. He had only had the Ten Commandments in his hands for half an hour and he was already handling the weapon with the same ease that Knightwalker had. He would reach the wall in minutes.

And he would not arrive alone.

-vVv-

The owl that talked like Fae was a fast flier. Almost faster than Happy. Natsu could hear his partner straining to move as quickly as they could. He had caught Fae's scent on the wind, fast approaching and when the flying snake crossed into his vision ahead of him. Fae was on her back, waving at him with a cheerful grin. Then her own partner pumped her wings and flew even faster.

"Aw no she isn't. Happy she's trying to race us! Give it all you got, buddy!"

"Aye sir!" And with that, Happy opened up, flying faster still. Fae clearly knew what he was up to since she laughed and said something in her odd hissing language to Cubellios. The snake slimmed down, moving faster than ever. But the gosh dang glowing bird was still faster than both of them!

He didn't try to call to her or say anything. They were moving too fast for her to be able to hear him. Not without some kind of magical enhancement. But Natsu did check Fae over as they flew. He didn't smell any blood, and she didn't smell tired either. She had been messing around with a lot of really strong smelling stuff though, it made his nose itch.

 _Probably that stink bomb recipe she came up with with Droy._

But all in all, the girl seemed fine. He'd have to wait until he had time to really get a good look at her.

The floating city smelled very strongly of cats. Were there not a fight waiting for him, Natsu would have loved to stay awhile and poke around. An entire city full of cats like Happy and Carla! How cool was that? The silver owl was clearly intent on leading them straight through the city, the most direct route to the lacrima.

"Hope you got some fancy flying in you, pal, cause we're about to have some fun!"

"Got it!"

Natsu trusted Happy completely. He didn't pay much attention to where they were flying, leaving that to his friend. He was usually focused instead on whatever fight they were involved in. He settled instead for keeping an eye on Fae and Cubellios. She wasn't standing the way Cobra had in their fight, she was crouched close to her partner's body, almost stretched out along her neck in a streamlined position to reduce drag and give them even more speed.

Watching her face as he was, he saw her zone out as her magic told her something. Saw her face shift with horror and fear.

Then there came a grinding crunch and a roar from the city as a massive beam of light tore through the city and impacted the huge lacrima Natsu could see ahead. It was tucked behind the city, just a little smaller than it. But he could see it through the buildings. When the light faded, he could see it had left a massive chain in its wake.

With a groan, the chain started to tighten, towing the lacrima towards the city.

Lacrima was a stable way of storing magic. Normally. Once it had settled down. But this lacrima, like the material that had encased the Tower of Heaven, was practically brand new. Jostling it could easily cause a massive fiery explosion.

An explosion that would be powered by his friends.

 _Master. Mira. Cana. Elfman, Macao, Romeo, Wakaba._

They and everyone else would all die if that lacrima exploded without being triggered by a Dragon Slayer.

 _No._

The girl that had looked, sounded and even smelled exactly like Lisanna. Only his friend had never smelt so sad and terrified all at the same time and looked at him like she was seeing a ghost.

 _They're mine. They don't get to die! Not on my watch!_

Fire spurted from his feet as he growled wordlessly, the extra thrust forcing Happy to spend all his time keeping them from crashing into a building. Natsu personally wouldn't have cared if they did. Nor would his forward thrust have let up. The cries of alarm from the cats who witnessed their rapid passing didn't even register in his mind. He was reaching within himself and stoking his inner fire as high and hot as it could go.

As soon as his friends were safe and free, he was following the chain that was already starting to tow them towards their deaths. The others could handle the army. Being a Dragon Slayer meant fighting what others couldn't. That was his job. What he was good at. The big fish of any fight was what he aimed for because that was the kind of enemy he excelled at facing. That was his strength. His guildmates had other advantages. And if there was something that could tow an entire island through the air, that counted as a really freaking big fish.

-vVv-

The old geezer with the vials had his back turned to the combat. His mistake. Gray was on him like a hailstorm coming out of the sky.

His plan for making it through the footsoldiers had been simple.

Make a long road of ice.

Stand on said ice.

Have Jellal give him a boost.

Growing up learning how to manipulate ice into any form he desired had also resulted in an uncanny sense of balance when fighting on it. A sense that others did not always share.

So while Gray shot through the crowd like a human missile, a locomotive engine going before him to smash down anyone standing in his way, everyone who had the misfortune of being in his path was thrown to the ground. A combination of the massive force and the lack of firm footing made it so Gray had a clear path to the hunch figure trying to retreat from the fight.

" _Ice Make Impact!"_ Instead of a hammer, a massive battering ram with all the force of Gray's momentum behind it sent him flying through the air until he impacted the far wall with a dull crunch.

He slumped, motionless. A large number of vials had shattered on impact and were letting off some peculiar smells, pooling in his robes and on the stone around him.

 _He's not dead, is he?_

Gray formed a massive pickaxe from his ice to slam into the ground and kill his forward movement. He checked on him, keeping a sharp eye on the alarmed men he had blasted through to get here.

The man still had a pulse, but he wouldn't be moving any time soon with an impact like that.

 _Ok. That ought to take care of that. Now to get back._

He was at risk of being surrounded the longer he stayed isolated out here.

But before Gray could move more than a few steps, a gnarled, swiftly bruising hand seized his arm and he had a glimpse of manic eyes and a mouth full of broken teeth.

One of which didn't look very much like a tooth. It actually looked hollow-

The man pulsed.

Gray barely managed to form a sleeve of ice over his arm as the man lunged up to try and bite him. It stopped him, but when his reflexive punch to the face threw him off, Gray saw instead of human teeth marks, two distinctive puncture marks in the ice and the ice was actually melting away, steaming and turning a nasty shade of grey-

Gray produced a mace out of ice and smashed it into the man even further away before he could try for another bite. Even as he impacted the side of a building, he began to chance in ways no human ever should...

He grew larger, but not immense. He actually stayed somewhat human...from the waist up. Everything else had turned into a spider with legs that were taller than Gray was. The human head, arms and torso had torn skin as muscle seemed to form out of nowhere and eight claw tipped feet scrabbled on the ground as the man righted himself from his previously insensate position.

 _I really should have known he'd be able to do it too._

Gray eyed the man's mouth, his hands, his claws, everything could be dangerous. Since he had tried to bite him, and there was a clear viscous liquid running from his mouth that didn't look froth enough to be drool, he would bet the man now had a poisonous bite.

"Impressive, boy!" The man cackled. "I never believed that a Total Transformation would be necessary!"

"Liar." Gray stated, eyes scanning the dark glossy body armor his abdomen and legs now sported for weaknesses. "You wouldn't have made it if you didn't want to use it."

"Eh, true enough! But some things are just too good to share!"

And then he lunged, legs scrabbled, webbing flying from his feet and venom hissing in the air.

 _Just great._

Gray thought, bringing his hands together to form a pair of ice swords.

 _Natsu gets to go play hero and bust everyone out, while I get to be pest control._

-vVv-

 _ **Gray has engaged in combat with a drider.**_

That...was unexpected but not as important as what I read from the chain that had impacted the lacrima that contained the rest of the guild.

 _ **Code ETD is about to be activated.**_

The Exceed were about to be turned into fuel for something even worse than the chain.

 _ **Dragon Chain Cannon, a harpoon like structure with enough force to tow an island.**_

 _How long? How long do we have?_

I had to warn the Exceed before they got turned into living batteries. They had to get out of the line of fire, they had to get out of the way!

 _ **ETD activates in t-minus, 15 minutes.**_

I read from G2 that they needed to consolidate all their magic reserves to get the thing working. They didn't have as much access to any of us or our magic for a live harvest.

 **:Cubellios, fly over the city of cats:**

She flew into a graceful loop to reverse her direction, which I only survived because of magic channeled into my hands to stick to her back like a burr.

 _I need someone in charge among the Exceed. Someone they will listen to!_

The background research I had looked at told me that the Exceed put on a great deal of airs because they were the only race in the world that had access to their own reserve of magic power. They were arrogant enough, they wouldn't listen to a human girl, not even if she had magic and not even to save their own lives.

 _ **Queen Shagotte.**_

I didn't look if she would listen to me. I didn't check the probabilities or even the best way to persuade her. I just gave Cubellios the direction we were going and held on. I hadn't even gotten within three hundred feet of the Exceed Palace when I saw several larger Exceed take off, clearly to try and escort me away from their airspace. Not very successfully. I was a head and a half taller than even the largest one.

We were noticeably faster in the air than the cats. I got the feeling they weren't as practiced as Happy when it came to zipping around quickly. G2 verified that with a glimpse as to how the smaller race had survived Faust's bloodthirsty and power hungry reign up until now.

By trickery, deceit and one seer with enough power to see death.

The royal line of the Exceed possessed the innate talent to see the future. Some more strongly than others. Thus, the charade had gone on for years that the Exceed were gods, with their ruler smiting humans with death at a whim. It had kept the race safe, and given them all god complexes.

They moved gracefully, but they were straining to close the distance between us.

My instructions to Cubellios were followed to the letter, she battered her way into the Exceed sized palace, which thankfully had vaulted ceilings that let me stand up to my full height.

"Intruder!" A orangish cat with-

 _...What?_

Not even the imminent danger could stop me from gawping at the cat in a parade ground hat that was currently yowling up a storm.

 _That pudgy face, the ginger hair...Ichiya's Edo counterpart is a frigging Exceed!_

 _That's kinda funny. Not gonna lie._ But my attention was focused instead on the very royal looking feline seated on a throne that was just above my head. To an Exceed, she would tower over them. The robe she wore looked impressive and ornate, with white frills on the back resembling large feathered wings. It also made her look several times larger than she actually was.

What struck me next about her was her expression.

Normally, when a large snake and a crazy girl literally break through a wall into your life, you are somewhat taken aback. Maybe even a little scared, depending on whether the snake is large enough to swallow you like a pill. But this cat looked resigned and grim.

And uncannily familiar, though for a different reason entirely that I didn't have time to mull over. But G2's soft words made me change my explanation and hurried rant to a short, simple statement.

 _ **She knows.**_

"Faust is initiating Code ETD against Extalia. Your people have to evacuate, now. You've only got ten minutes."


	38. Gray really hates spiders

Shagotte didn't start or yell like most royalty would have in that situation. Instead, she simply rose from the seat, and I saw her robes were little more than an elaborate shell for her to hide in. Within, she was a petite white feline in simple clothes with a few small pearls outlining a heart on one side of her face.

"Sir Nichiya, Minister Nadi, spread the word. We must leave right away, we have very little time."

"Your majesty you cannot possibly be suggesting we listen to this human?!" Nichiya sounded offended at the very idea.

"Her words are true. I have seen them and I will not allow my people to die because of hubris I enabled them to develop." Shagotte's eyes switched to me and in spite of her being less than half my height, I got the feeling I was standing before a mother. The weight of her gaze and the look in her eyes.

"Young one, I'm afraid my power will not be suited to the task of spreading the word to my people within time. Will you be my wings and help me save my country?" It was a formal request, one that seemed to have some weight in the Exceed culture given how Nichiya's tail was fluffing up in outrage.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to save them." I told her firmly, offering a hand as Cubellios shifted her coils in preparation for take off. Then she shifted deliberately to swat Nichiya away from my outstretched arm, more specifically his sword. She hissed angrily, a drop or two of venom spattering on the carpet and melting it quickly as she eyed the orange cat with barely concealed fury.

"Majesty, please! This human cannot possibly be trusted!" He recovered with remarkable speed, placing himself between Cubellios and his queen with his tiny sword drawn, edge shimmering with magic.

It would have been a brave act if it wasn't wasting valuable time his people didn't have.

 **:Hatchling, are these foolish cats truly worth saving? They strike at those who would aid them!:**

I didn't answer her. Shagotte was looking pissed at the captain of her guard.

"Sir Nichiya! I have bowed to the whims of this people as they hailed me as their goddess and guardian. And all I did, I did for their sake and safety and the continuance of our race even when it broke their hearts and mine! Now, unless you wish to raise your hand against me, you will stand aside and let me lead my people to safety! Side by side with a human who is doing more for Extalia than the captain of the army!" Her sleek fur was barely raised, but it was, her soft voice had sharpened into a near berserk fury and her small paws were lifted, tiny well groomed claws peeking out. Her every nerve was on edge and she clearly was on the verge of flying into a rage.

 _ **She has been aware of this danger for a long time.**_

Hopefully long enough to have put some warnings in place to prep her people for evacuation.

Nichiya was so shocked that he dropped his sword.

Shagotte barely managed to contain herself as she stalked forward, accepting my hand.

"Pardon me." I said, bending and lifting her into my arms. "You have no way of holding on, this will be more secure." Then I hopped onto Cubellios's back and we were out the hole in the wall, flying up.

No sooner had I come into sight than the still airbourne guards started a panicked yowl.

"A human has abducted the queen!"

 _Oh for-!_

Part of me was exasperated and annoyed beyond belief. The other part of me was laughing. I had wrecked a palace, decimated the morale and dignity of an army and kidnapped a queen all in one day!

"There is a tower where all can hear my voice." Shagotte informed me as we gained height, Cubellios divining what I intended.

"No need and no time. When you're ready, go ahead and speak. _Sonorous!_ " I had already gotten used to feeling how my magic worked with Exceed thanks to Happy.

Behind us, the lacrima moved ever so slowly closer to Extalia, towed by the massive chain. The guards may have been up in arms over me, but several other Exceed were clearly already at the point where they were ready to flee.

Shagotte's voice rang like a chime amped up to eleven. There wasn't a part of the city her voice didn't touch and I knew I'd probably be going to Wendy with some minor hearing damage later. But there wasn't a single citizen in the city who didn't hear her order.

" **My people! Fly to the west! Leave all behind! Faust would destroy Extalia but do not let him take our people!"**

There was a moment of shouted confusion beneath, some wings popping to life and others hesitating seeing their queen in the hands of a strange human and without all her royal regalia.

" **Fly! Before the island is lost!"**

I quickly shifted Shagotte so she was clinging to my back instead of my carrying her. Making it plain that she was there of her own volition and not because I had captured her.

" **Begin to fly, they shall follow."** Her voice wasn't as ringing now that she wasn't trying to reach the further reaches of the city, But it was still quite loud.

 **:Away from the city and the impact, my friend:** I told the snake who pumped her wings and soared on. Shagotte repeated her call again and again, encouraging her people to get up and move. Even though Natsu was going to remove the threat of a magical explosion, the impact of the two islands colliding would destroy everything standing on them. So long as all the Exceed took flight-

 _ **ETD is aimed at the area directly before Extalia.**_ Right where I was leading them.

 **:Bear left!:** Cubellios abruptly changed course, and I saw that we had amassed a large following of the Exceed. Shagotte's breath caught faintly.

 _ **She saw too.**_

 _Huh. She really is a seer._

Cubellios kept on flying, eventually some other Exceed who were strong fliers took over leading the pack while Shagotte, Cubellios and I looped back around to snag up some stragglers. G2 was outlining the blast radius brightly in my vision. The line we had to get everyone across before it was too late. Exceed had their own magic and some of them had made their own magic items. Those would all be left behind and destroyed, releasing their power all at once, not to mention the residual magic from the lacrima. Which had just vanished behind a massive pillar of fire with a roar that shook the air and made the last few ranks of Exceed surge forward in a nervous panic.

I cheered.

"Attaboy Natsu!"

With my ninja headband active letting me stick to Cubellios's back like an insect, I snatched the slower fliers out of the air, planted them on her back and reached out for yet another one, keeping a careful eye on G2's calculated weight limit for Cubellios.

Then, after a beat of hesitation...I turned off my headband, snagged another X-ball and leapt off her back.

" _Fly!"_ The familiar spell snapped into being, preset from a rune on my bracer. I then snatched another four Exceed and placed them on Cubellios on my stead, flying up to soar beside her head.

Losing the energy regeneration effect of the headband would hit me later, but for right now, this was the best thing I could do.

I was a faster flier than the Exceed, so I quickly pulled up at their head with Cubellios beside me. The looks on some of their faces when they saw not only the snake flying, but the human too was priceless and would have been a lot more amusing if not for-

 _ **Impact.**_

The crash was incredible. The sound of stone and earth colliding started very suddenly, and it just kept right on going, the Dragon Chain cannon towing the entire island through Extalia until both were nothing but rubble raining down onto the ground and dust hanging in the air.

 _We need to get low._ The city itself had been keeping us safe from ETD, it's bulk providing us with valuable cover. But with it destroyed, the dust cloud that remained was all that was keeping us from being shot out of the sky.

 _And it occurs to me that I am just as vulnerable. Mystogan is gonna kill me later._ And he'd probably have to get in line. No one was gonna be happy with me putting myself out on a firing range.

I twisted in the air and dove, keeping low to the ground. Most of the cloud followed, but some still stayed above.

" **Dive!"** Shagotte called, still under the effects of my voice boosting spell.

The first blast missed most of the Exceed. But a few were still caught in it. Their lacrima dropped like the rocks they now were and there came a frenzy of quick activity as their friends and family moved to catch them all before they could hit the ground. Those who had escaped the ray hurried to dive down lower to our level.

 _Get behind cover._

That was what needed to happen now. ETD had a very quick reload rate and once they focused on us down here, we wouldn't have the maneuverability to avoid it and I didn't have the juice or the inspiration to block it.

 _Something to hide us._ _Or at least them._

I sensed the next shot being lined up and rolled to the side.

" **Left!"** Shagotte's order was obeyed and this time we only lost three Exceed to the ETD.

 _I need something to disrupt it or they'll keep getting picked off._ I appealed to G2, searching for something, anything to try and keep this race from getting harvested.

 _ **It is a variant of the same machine as the Anima. Made to turn Exceed into harvestable lacrima.**_

 _Targeting system?_

 _ **It tracks active magic usage.**_

 _Which means as long as we keep flying, they know where we are. But if we stop, we're sitting ducks. On foot, we'd never get away from the impact zone._

But certainly there wasn't anything I could do about the cannon from this distance. The only spell I had that could stand up to that range was a Patronus, and sending them a positive vibe incarnate, message bearing, obviously magical animal would be about as helpful as sending a postcard.

 _Just keep ahead of it until we can get out of range._ I bore down, trying to get a bead on where they would be aiming their next attack and steering the flock of Exceed behind me accordingly.

-vVv-

Gray had had a decidedly neutral stance towards spiders for most of his life. But now, he decided that he hated them.

Or maybe he just hated this guy.

The shield of ice he hastily molded between them was smashed down just as quickly. His mutated opponent was trying to close the distance between them, scuttling over and around any number of obstacles but the largest, his clawed legs finding purchase on everything. Gray was presently caught trying to get some distance to have enough time to form a gun or something to let him try and cripple the damn thing. But it was moving too quickly and he never had the time to formulate a proper defense.

 _I need to slow it down so I can get to it's legs._ Almost anything was vulnerable at the legs...

Slow.

He had already used the idea before on the giant mutant cephalopod. Cold was the absence of energy which in turn slowed people down as it stole their body heat. And a spider would be as vulnerable as cold blooded fish to extremely low temperatures.

" _Ice Make: Maze!"_ He envisioned it with a large number of twists, turns and curves, too low for the spider thing to creep inside and potentially trap him somewhere. But he also imagined it with a lid so that even if it climbed to try and spot him, it wouldn't see anything.

Gray wound around inside the maze, superchilling pockets of air inside of it, ready to be released. Cold enough to instantly cause a modest case of hypothermia in a normal human. Or hopefully, a mutant, crazy spider monster.

To Gray, it felt no different than regular air. Though the lack of oxygen could get dicey if he stayed in there for too long.

He had about half filled his trap with the super chilled air when a dark clawed leg broke through the ceiling and he threw himself flat. He escaped being impaled but received a deep slash across his back.

"Aaarrgh!"

 _Pain. So much pain. No, focus. Need to close the wound. Think of the solution. Picture it and-_

"Ice Make: Bandage!"

The edges of the cut iced over, freezing the blood before more could escape. A temporary solution, but the best he could do at the moment.

Forming a slide under him, Gray kicked out even as another claw stabbed down into the gloom of his maze.

"Spiders are master hunters, boy! They never let their prey escape once in their web!" The muffled cackle was no less unsettling for it being slightly more difficult to hear.

 _Damn._ Gray heard scuffling and scratching on the top of his maze. _He can still figure out a way to track me in here..._

He had wanted to add more rooms, but the present overall temperature, hovering around negative 30, would have to be enough.

Gray slid out of the maze, still on his back, and thus was able to bring his hands together.

" _Ice Make: Dome!"_ The ice of the maze reformed according to his mental design. Like a giant cup placed over his opponent. Only as low, heavy and thick as Gray could make it. The man spider was caught inside it, along with all the freezing air Gray had been filling his closed off maze with.

The creature spasmed, reduced to a dark shadow as it scrabbled against the ice, causing harsh screeches to penetrate the air. Gray pushed himself to his feet, feeling the wound on his back crackle as the ice he had used to hastily cover it pulled at his skin. He placed his hands against the dome, facing the shadow as the thing tore at it's prison. He gathered his thoughts, focus and magic, feeling the magic spiral out of his skin.

" _Cryogenize."_

Inside, the temperature plummeted from far below freezing to obscenely cold. From about -15 to -60 or so. The scratching slowed.

 _Cold Shock Response: Causes gasping, a sense of breathlessness and temporary rigidity of limbs. Usually seen in people who fell into freezing water. Usually leads to drowning in that case._

Ultear had taught him, not just magic, but everything there was to know about ice, cold, and people's reactions to them. Consequently, Gray was on permanent standby for snow rescue missions when a crew of mountaineers went missing.

The thought of normality made Gray sag briefly against the side of his creation, listening as the monster within slowly grew still, paralyzed from freezing. He was done with this madness for the day. All he wanted to do right now was go to sleep and wake up at home.

 _Gotta go see Wendy. Shoulder..._

His patch job wouldn't last forever.

He popped another X-ball, exhaling in relief as the slightly stale tasting magic flooded his system. Then he straightened, collecting his thoughts and visualizing what he wanted.

Dispelling his dome revealed the being within, patchy with frostbite and barely moving. The regular air made it hiss in pain, the sudden thaw doing more harm than good.

" _Ice Make: Hammer."_ Gray then set about the grim business of breaking the thing's legs. He didn't have the raw strength to bludgeon someone to death and he had to make use of all vulnerabilities.

It felt rather like snapping open an oversized crabs' legs, only not nearly as appetizing.

Then the ground began to shake.

-vVv-

"You've got to be kidding me!? Now? Really!?"

Lucy had seen a lot of stuff in her short months in Fairy Tail.

Some of them were absolutely wonderful, others were more terrifying. Like Lullaby, Deliora, Nirvana...and now this.

Natsu had talked her ear off about Igneel. She recognized the basic shape of a dragon in the things head but-

There came a sensation of loss and she hastily shut off all her magic, pulling it tight and close around her skin, even hurriedly dismissing Sagitarius so he wouldn't be drained of his power.

"What is that?!" She heard Wendy cry in alarm from behind her.

Wendy.

Her job right now had been to protect Wendy while Sagitarius covered the others who were fighting. They had held their position in the empty gap of wall Gray and Erza had knocked down earlier, content to let their enemies come to them and eliminate them that way.

But this...thing seemed to even be a surprise to the Edolas soldiers.

It towered above them all, vaguely human in shape but with a draconic sort of head and an odd sort of...tail extending behind it. In its hands, it had a proportionately sized long sword and kite shield. (Erza had quizzed her one day and found her knowledge of weaponry to be...remiss and had rectified the situation quickly.)

And it was very bad that it was so large and still so far away. It's head turned towards them, it's maw opening, glowing-

 _Oh no._

She had seen the stance often enough in Natsu to guess what it was about to do.

Lucy ran back towards Wendy, intent on getting them both behind the outer wall as quickly as she could so maybe, just maybe-

" _Requip!"_ Erza's cry was the only thing Lucy heard as she glanced back upon reaching Wendy, who was already being tugged away by Carla.

Clad in black and silver armor with shields on both arms, Erza was thrown skyward by Gajeel, landing on the highest building nearby, between everyone and the incoming attack. The two shields locked together and a massive magic circle formed before them.

 _Adamantine Armor. Her strongest defensive armor._ Lucy had heard about it in passing, referencing the Phantom Lord debacle. It had been strong enough to block an Abyss Break, though it had nearly killed Erza to do so.

The Dragon's Roar impacted Erza's circle with a crash and Lucy reflexively covered her ears from the cacophony of noise that ensued. But even over that, she could hear Erza's raw throated scream of challenge and defiance as she burned through her magic at a reckless rate to try and keep the beam from vaporizing what lay behind her. Not only them, but also the men they were fighting.

 _It won't be enough._ Lucy felt a bubble of fear form in her throat, effectively choking her as she scrambled behind cover with Wendy. She could already see Erza's armor start to chip and crack. _Erza's magic might not give out, but her armor will! Even against the Abyss Break, it shattered._

Erza would protect her friends or die trying, Lucy knew that about her...But she didn't want her to die.

 _C'mon, think...! What can I do? What can anyone do?_

Then there came a shriek and the sound abruptly cut out as the continuing blast of energy was suddenly refracted, sliced into two beams. The Celestial Spirit mage tensed for a moment before she saw that the second beam was shooting harmlessly into the sky.

"What was that?" Wendy asked, lifting her head from behind the rocks.

"I'll look, you stay down." Lucy cautiously lifted her head as the odd silence started to be peppered by cheers.

Peering around the broken stone blocks of the wall, Lucy saw Erza was still on the roof, but she was not alone. The subtle mist in the air and the dark haired figure told her that Gray had joined her and was supporting her gently.

 _Blocking all that energy probably almost made her overheat._ But Erza was clearly alright, even as Lucy watched she straightened and Requiped to another set of armor that she couldn't identify. But the cheers quickly solidified into distinct words.

" _Long live King Jellal!"_

"What?"

There was Jellal on the ground still, and there was another Jellal up above, carrying an impressive looking spear and wearing a cloak-

 _Mystogan?_

"People are calling Mystogan Jellal." Lucy reported to the Sky Dragon Slayer and the white feline.

"That's his real name." Wendy's voice was quiet as she rose and came around. "He'd be Edo-Jellal if he weren't using another name." Lucy's mind flashed through all the implications of that as well as the fact...

"So he could legitimately be the king here." 'Siegrain' Jellal's alter ego in Earthland, had basically been a Prince Charming. Handsome, powerful, charming in his interviews, seemingly impeccable reputation...

In Edolas, the Prince bit was literal.

 _That's almost funny._

"C'mon, let's go find out what happened."

-vVv-

Mystogan's heart was racing faster now than it ever had before and he forced his grip to loosen on Ten Commandments haft.

The Rune Save function of the spear was possibly one of the more underrated forms the magic weapon had. The ability to cut through magic.

Without the time to attack the blast of pure energy more than once, Mystogan had needed to place his strike at just the right angle to split the beam as he had. He was just glad he had been able to cut it down to something Erza could handle without collapsing. The fight was far from over.

"Mystogan." Seeing his own face looking back at him was less unsettling than it had been at first, though at least Jellal was an ally now. He noted his counterpart looked worn from a long, heavy battle but was otherwise well.

"Jellal." Another cheer for 'King Jellal' made him flinch slightly with another stab of guilt.

 _Later. Worry about it later._

"What's the situation here?" Erza had more seniority in the guild, but he would stay in charge of this operation as the most well informed of the pair of them.

"The army's been persistent about trying to overwhelm us, some quite creatively with some shapeshifting. Natsu went to free the others, Gray took off after the one supplying potions to the shapeshifters-"

"Byro." Mystogan's voice was hard with scorn and disgust. Faust's second in command and conspirator in everything that was wrong with Edolas-Fiore right now.

"-but he's back now and keeping Erza's armor from melting with her still wearing it. And judging by the large flying fireball headed for it, that huge suit of armor is about to be attacked by Natsu."

Mystogan wanted to utter any number of undignified curses and wished wholeheartedly that Fae were there to send a message after Natsu to break off his attack and wait for backup.

"That armor is Dorma Anim: The most powerful magic item in this world. Regular magic can barely even scratch it." Even from where they stood below on the ground, Mystogan saw Wendy and Gajeel's heads come up sharply and look at him with an uncanny stare. _Their hearing truly is incredible._

"I had hoped to neutralize Faust before he could try and activate it. It's keepers never used it, not even when attacked and it could have turned the tide of war in their favor."

"Why? Was it unsafe to use?"

"Too powerful. It drains what little magic there is left in this air at a voracious rate. It destroyed this world's old environment and it took centuries to find a semblance of balance again." He looked down at the spear in his hands, mouth tight. "He truly has lost his mind..."

"Likely my prince, he feels you are here to stage a coup and overthrow him. Thus, he feels that this is a necessary measure and a worthwhile one." Pantherlily said, landing beside him, barely breathing hard. "I have sent my men to secure the civilians outside the city or in their underground shelters. They are completing the evacuation now."

"What about the army?"

"Confused, leaderless, for the most part."

"Couldn't you command them?" Pantherlily's expression was sardonic at best.

"My prince, I am well respected and trusted among my own men and the citizens. Not among the legions commanded by my fellows."

 _No, they would be either torn between kowtowing to you because you were an Exceed or resenting your authority over them because the army has always been a dog pit of infighting children with explosive weapons._

So they would still have a large amount of uncoordinated soldiers attacking them as their commanders could motivate them. Which meant that not everyone could go to try and stop Faust from effectively ripping their world apart.

"Mystogan." Wendy was there, carried by Carla and looking as somber as the grave. "Natsu is going to fight the Dorma Anim."

"Yes."

"Is that something he could do alone?"

He knew what the answer would cause. He knew what it would bring.

It would make Wendy turn and fly straight into the heart of danger because only she out of everyone could heal Natsu should he fall in battle. And she was a wizard, facing danger was what she did and he had seen her throw herself into adapting to her new life with vigor and determination.

"...No, Wendy. No one man can." She didn't say anything, just turned back down to Gajeel with a steely light in her eyes.

"We're gonna go help Natsu."

"I ain't got wings, girlie." _yes...Yes that would work._

From his observations, the Dorma Anim was the closest thing to a dragon in Edolas. It had the same power, the same hardy nature. And here were three people whose entire skill sets revolved around defeating the impossible and conquering the almighty.

"What do you think you could do against Dorma Anim?" Pantherlily asked Wendy carefully. He was likely going to try and stop her. Wendy looked at him and Mystogan saw a hint of a young dragon behind her eyes.

"I'm going to go fight beside my friend, and do what I was raised to do: Slay whatever is too strong for other people." Gajeel clawed his way up beside them, a savage grin on his face.

"I ain't letting Salamander melt all that tasty looking metal before I get to take a bite out of it." He looked straight at Pantherlily... "You look strong. You get me to that pile of tin and I'll make sure it can't hurt your city."

"Prince Jellal-"

"They're right, Lily. Go." Mystogan shifted Ten Commandments into a better position and readied himself mentally for the battle against the still determined soldiers down below, who were. "The three of them are our best chance against Dorma Anim." Which was already starting to come closer to their position, further cementing Lily's statement that Faust was targeting him in particular. Or perhaps Jellal since they were identical and Jellal had been seen by the people first.

 _Either way, this will be a messy fight at best._

His guildmates had been fighting hard and long, they were pushing their limits with little to no time to recover. Time which he would not need magically as they would.

"Have the others pull back, recuperate and get your strength back. I'll hold them off." he informed Jellal quietly.

Ten Commandments shifted into Silfarion and Mystogan leapt into battle.

-vVv-

We had more or less left the range of ETD, but were still searching for a safe place for the flock to land and recuperate after their hard flight. And there just wasn't any place that...felt right.

 _ **The choice is made.**_

 _What?_

"Kaah! Up here!" The hollar came from above and I looked up to see a white cat with an impressive monobrow hailing us from an island tucked in the sheltering grasp of a large tree. "Stop flying you dimwits! They'll track you as long as you're using magic!"

"Please! Come and take shelter with us!" This cat was an iconic shade of blue that I knew better than any other color.

It was the exact same color as Happy's fur.

"Marl, Lucky." Shagotte looked shocked, several of the exhausted Exceed landed in the space before a small neat house, deactivating their wings.

"You know them?"

"They and Pantherlily are the only Exceed to ever be exiled from our nation for disagreeing with a royal decree." She sounded soft, regretful and completely understanding.

I didn't see why Marl and Lucky had been banished, but I did get a flash of a white and blue egg that looked...vaguely familiar.

"Will you be alright with them?"

"They are far better people than most, but their quarrel is with me and me alone." She said, softly and grimly determined.

 _How long will they be safe if they stay here?_ I appealed to G2

 _ **Projected estimate: 5 days and 3 hours if searches are sent out by standard Edolas Fioran patrol patterns.**_ It would be enough, though it was far from a permanent solution.

"I need to go." _Dodge the lasers trying to turn me to stone and get back to the city and my friends._ Even if they didn't want me fighting, they wouldn't want me far away.

"Then go, child. We are already in your debt for your warning and your guidance."

Cubellios landed to let her passengers off and Marl approached and checked several of the more tired ones over, fussing like a mom would.

I hesitated before getting back onto Cubellios though, because of both her and Shagotte.

I reached out and softly touched the queen's shoulder and felt knowledge flash through my mind.

 _ **She saw ETD when it was conceptualized, shortly after Anima was invented. She knew that the Exceed would be targeted sooner or later and wished to take steps to ensure their race survived.**_

 _ **She ordered the eggs of an entire generation be taken away from their parents and sent through an Anima to Earthland. Even her own egg, to the point of sacrificing a wing for it to survive. Marl and Lucky disagreed with her decision, quite vocally, which resulted in their being banished. Shagotte only ordered it to prevent the other Exceed from harming them after they made themselves pariahs.**_

"Shagotte...There is something more you should know." She looked up at me, frowning faintly, curious and concerned. I knelt and leaned in to whisper to her, focusing on what I wanted to convey.

 _Carla._

 _Wendy's friend and protector. Her confidence, determination and absolute loyalty to what she deemed worthy of her attention. Her caring nature, which came out to Wendy, myself and the young Frosch._

"Your daughter's name is Carla." I just touched her forehead, focusing on the sensation of copying and transferring the knowledge I had of the white feline and her character and letting it glide into Shagotte's head. "She made it."

 _Your child survived, and thrived and is someone you can be proud of._

If there were tears in the queen's eyes as I rose and trotted over to the new hosts of the Exceed nation, I didn't look back to see them. But I did hear several Exceed ask, alarmed, what was the matter and why she was crying.

My attention was focused on Marl and Lucky.

"Marl? Lucky?" The kindly blue feline turned towards me right away.

"Yes dear? Are you well, do you need something?" I knelt then accepting a small, rough work worn paw.

"Yes. I need to tell you and your husband something important." Lucky spat, but approached when Marl waved him over.

"What do you want, human?" he asked grouchily.

 _Well, I know where Happy got his personality from: Not this guy!_

I didn't take offense though. He had his reasons for being gruff, and grief was one of them.

"Your egg made it through safely. It was found by one of my very good friends, who helped it hatch." Marl's face went still, while shock, hope and grief warred for dominance on Lucky's face.

"Your son's name is Happy. And believe me, his name suits him." There was a lot more I wanted to tell them. And a lot more that they clearly wanted to ask me. I clasped their paws briefly, letting my knowledge of Happy flow through to them. Both my fondness for the winged cat and my irritation at his familial ribbing. Happy: the second friendly face I had seen after escaping captivity as a child.

 _I want nothing more than for you to meet them in person. But at least in this way...their stories can stay with you. Knowing they're happy without you is a burden, but not as heavy a one as not knowing whether your children survived in the foreign world they were sent to._

 _ **Natsu, Gajeel and Wendy are gathering to face Faust bearing Dorma Anim.**_

Now, the sight would have scared me at any point in my life before I had seen Acnologia off of Gildarts. It wasn't pleasant even now, but it was at least not as bad as other things I had seen. But the update did remind me that Cubellios and I had a lot of ground to cover together to reach the city and our guild.

I withdrew from Happy's bright eyed parents, but not before Marl embraced me with fervently whispered gratitude. Cubellios had been relieved of her passengers and was now taking a deep drink from the couple's well.

 **:Are you well?:**

I asked her, she shook herself slightly.

 **:Keeping up with your life is far more busy than I ever was with my friend:** This was said half in complaint, half in satisfaction.

 **:If you are too tired to fly, I can do that for a while:** I had been asking a lot of her today already. And of myself for that matter. But we had to get back, one way or another. Though some people might be glad if it took a bit longer, just so we were safely out of harm's way.

 _Hopefully the Team Seven luck ran itself out back with Sugarboy and Hughes._ And since I had taken the headband off, that was further reason for the side effect to no longer be active. I wasn't sure if I had another big fight in me without some rest.

 **:You should not, hatchling. Your power is not limitless:** Her caution checked my zeal very effectively. Mystogan had specifically warned me to be careful and I was already toeing the line of where I had promised I would stop. Flying out away from Faustian had burned through about a third of my magic reserves after everything was said and done. I kept on intermittently regaining some magic when my clones throughout the city were destroyed, that was the only thing keeping me together ahead of the net drain of flying like I had to get here. If I flew back...

 _I'll definitely be below the limit._ And I'd already broken one promise to Mystogan by using Shadow Clones in my fight against Hughes. And another in spirit when I had fought not one but two army commanders in the first place.

 _...What are the odds of it going badly in me if I try to fly back to Faustian?_

 _ **65% chance of spontaneous structural failure.**_

That...was too high. I knew it. Everyone in my guild would say the same. It was the sane, smart, reasonable thing to do.

And I hated it.

 _This...is hell._ Like when Freed had trapped me in the guild hall during the harvest Festival.

I'd have to start walking back, give myself more time to regain energy, charge my kinetic relays to try and get some more back.

 _How soon can I make it to the city on foot if I hustle?_

 _ **Six hours, 27 minutes.**_

 _That long? Why that-?_ A twinge of pain from my leg reminded me that I hadn't come out of the day's fights unscathed. The excitement, and the fact I had spent most of my time flying had kept me from really noticing that my leg was badly bruised and not at all happy with supporting my weight. I wasn't going to be running anywhere until Wendy had a look at me. I could barely even afford the power to to splint it to try and support it a little.

In other words, too late to do anything more to help my friends.

 _There's gotta be some faster way back...! Something, anything!_

Cubellios and I glided to the ground and started for the city, moving as quickly as we could, leaving the Exceed to their personal politics and working out their issues with one another.

I had trained physically, but I had been running, fighting and moving all day with only the chance to drink some well water. I got tired really fast and had to slow to take care of myself, which frustrated me even more.

Some spindly grass by the side of a tree I passed made me stop, staring and thinking hard...

That...that was the same plant I had pointed Lucy, Wendy and Natsu towards to make contact with Edo-Fairy Tail.

I hurried towards it quickly, snapping off a twig and waiting impatiently.

" _Who is this?"_

 _Droy._

The relief I felt was short lived, as soon as the voice registered, I felt my spine stiffen and my crazy idea come out before I could stop it.

"My name...is Celeste D Faerun. And I'm an Earthland Fairy Tail wizard."

-vVv-

The girl's voice emitting from the call in started to resonate and grow louder until every voice in the guild hall was silent, listening to it. Droy stared at the mother plant which he had placed seedlings from so people could contact them all across Fiore and beyond. _It never did this before._

" _I know my Lucy, Wendy and Natsu already talked to you. I know you don't know me, or my Edolas self."_ There was silence for a beat. " _And I know exactly how scared you are."_

There seemed to be a soft swirling in the air. The dust motes through the window caught the light and suddenly they could all see a girl, kneeling by the callweed, holding the stalks with care.

She looked to be no more than ten years old. But every eye on her knew she had been fighting. And fighting hard. Small scratched, bruises, tousled clothing, the desperate exhaustion in her eyes.

" _I know everyone you've lost. I feel how much it still hurts."_ And there were tears glimmering in her eyes accompanying the unmistakable knowing that she did know. She did understand. Intimately, wholly.

" _...I don't want to lose my family. I can't reach them in time and even if I could, I could barely do anything to help them."_

Fear of loss, that was something they all knew. Every Fairy tail wizard in the guild, lived breathed and embodied that fear every day. Wondering if when the sun rose the next morning, if those who had gone out for work the night before would come back. Droy swallowed thickly, unable to tear his eyes away from the callweed.

 _This is why I didn't include visuals for callers..._

It hit everyone in the heartstrings too hard. They couldn't help everyone. They could barely help themselves.

"You got a point to this spiel, kid?" his tone came out harsher than he meant for it to. Actual tears were falling now and Droy generally felt like a piece of garbage.

" _Your guild hall is the only way I've got to get back to them in time."_ Glowing blue eyes seemed to stare into Droy's soul and he swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. " _Fairy Tail helped me before when I had no other hope...And I had to try and see if that was the same here."_

He had no way to respond to that. Nothing he could think of would phrase the refusal in a gentle enough way to make it seem like less than heartless.

Levy pushed him aside gently.

"Kid, we-"

"Lisanna, what-?" Natsu Dragion's voice was all that Levy managed to register before a grip like iron had seized her and tossed her aside.

"We're coming to get you Fae. Stay there. We'll be there in a few minutes." The girl's head lifted sharply then, shock painting her features with a new kind of emotion.

" _Lisanna...?"_ The barest whisper drifted across the line, but it made the white haired girl smile, cry and laugh.

"I'm here, Fae. I'll be there soon." She ended the call and then looked at Levy, who had never before realized how much the few inches Lisanna had on her made her seem taller.

"We're already orphans." Lisanna said to the motionless guild hall, glancing towards the small memorial they had erected for their fallen. "I'm not letting her become one too."


	39. Endings

Erza fought.

It was what she had always done since she was a child. Fight, defy, stand against those forces that always seemed to be present. Those who always tried to harm her loved ones. She could fight for hours upon hours, never seeming to lose strength. There had been tougher battles in Earthland that she had faced than this one. It meant she always had to be on the alert for those around her who weren't as capable in a prolonged fight like this one.

Erza moved aside to cover Lucy's flank as her arm faltered for a second, the whirling whip she was using to keep enemies at bay and disarm opponents slapping into the ground as she lost control of it for a split second. Her own summoned spear outreached the incoming enemies and forced them to withdraw from coming too close to Lucy before she got her momentum back. She then whirled to throw her spear into the shoulder of a man trying to get the drop on Gray, then turned her attention back to her own enemies, swords appearing in her hands, much to their surprise.

The woman who had been named 'Titania' by the people of Fiore knew she was one of the best fighters in their guild. And given what Fairy Tail's specialty was, that was saying something.

 _They can't keep this up._

So she would do her job: Step up and keep her guild safe.

Mystogan and Jellal both seemed to be holding their own, the former moving at unprecedented speeds thanks to his new spear, and the latter moving under the influence of Grand Chariot. Simon was still sending out discouraging auras from his position of safety, causing many enemies to simply retreat in either stark terror or disorganized panic. She also saw a faint aura around Lucy, not one intended to harm but-

 _Darkness Magic is normally used haphazardly in combat. The subtler effects of it includes being able to conceal things otherwise obvious._

Simon was using his magic on Lucy in particular to dampen, or conceal, her fear and exhaustion, letting her fight more effectively in the moment.

The sounds of the Dragon Slayers facing Dorma Anim were audible even at this distance. Their desperate enemies were drawing their final reserves of strength from that, the cries of the retreating civilians that had been confusing them so badly having vanished with them into safety.

 _King Jellal._ Mystogan had "somehow" failed to mention that he was a prince in this world. Erza absently wondered, as she brought the flats of her swords down on the helms of two men in front of her, if Fae had known that.

 _If she did, it wouldn't have changed anything in her behavior._ She sometimes worried just how many secrets Fae was privy to and felt honor bound to keep.

Then the ground began to rumble, Erza firmed her stance.

"Behind!" Lucy called, moving with Gray to face their rear. Mystogan and Jellal pulled back slightly, closing the gap between themselves and Erza and letting the scarlet haired woman turn back to face-

The massive tree seeming to grow out of the ground.

A tree flying Fairy Tail's banner.

And a green haired little girl all but falling out of an upper window with a smile suffusing her face with light and waving, grinning.

" **Fairy Tail! Charge!"** She cheered in a voice much greater and louder than her size should allow.

Then the doors opened and so many familiar faces poured out, all armed and ready for battle and etched in the same lines of determination that Erza knew so well.

Edolas's Fairy Tail had come to battle, placing their guild hall squarely in the gap in the wall, filling it almost completely.

"Glad you could make it!" Lucy called to a blond who was her carbon copy in every way. She turned back to the fight, shoulder to shoulder with her doppelganger, holding a key to the side. "Open: Gate of the Lion!" Loke appeared in a surge of golden light, dressed in a dapper looking suit and ready for combat.

"You called, Luc...y...Why the dust are there two of you? Not that I'm complaining-"

"Stop flirting, start fighting!" His summoner ordered, too exasperated to phrase it as politely as she normally would with her spirits.

"As my lady wishes!"

The brief scene of normality made Erza start to laugh as she threw herself back into the fight, now pushing the line of enemies back.

"Divide and conquer!" She called, feeling her lungs ache from the long battle and the laughter that tried to choke out the words as she heard Gray and his counterpart bicker about clothes. (It was incredibly odd to see Gray dressed though, she wouldn't deny that.)

Even war could not change some things. And she wouldn't have done so for the world.

"Erza Scarlet, right?"

Erza turned at the sharp, almost angry, voice to see Levy, Jet and Droy glaring at her. "The kid said that's your name. We're gonna be keeping an eye on you for now. Whatever she says, Knightwalker's killed too many of us for anything else."

 _This must be the Edolas Team Shadowgear. Is my counterpart truly such a monster, to inspire this reaction?_

"Do what you have to, but remember that the enemy is over there."

Edo-Levy smirked, then suddenly whipped up her massive gun and blasted a group of soldiers who had been trying to take advantage of Erza's distraction. "Believe me, I'll never have a problem blasting anyone dumb enough to put on an Edolas army uniform. Boys?"

Jet tore through the armored men, sending them crashing to the ground like bowling pins. Droy was carrying some kind of thorny vine that was lashing out crazily at whatever he directed it towards. Levy was hefting an intricate looking gun that was bringing down men at a rate that Erza expected to see from... basically anyone other than her.

She ignored the discrepancies and the way her head wanted to throb around accepting the differences.

" _Requip!"_ Blackwing armor would do the trick here. Lowered defense capabilities at the benefit of being able to fight that much more strongly. With someone able to watch her back, she could afford to go a little more all out.

-vVv-

 _I wish there was something I could do._ I thought, climbing the tree-house with the tired Cubellios still looped around my shoulders. (Part of me was wondering what kind of building licences I would need and who to pitch the idea to to have a guild hall, or at least a guild sanctioned safehouse with the same capabilities as this place. G2.0 was absently running through them all in my head.)

I had read what Lisanna planned to do within seconds of seeing her.

Stay in Edolas.

Even though she knew I had recognized her. It was my Lisanna, not Edo-Lisanna. I had cried upon seeing her. Unable to contain the joy that I felt at that part of my life's story opening up again. At...at being complete.

 _ **Lisanna has died. Lisanna is gone.**_

That was what I had heard back on the day when I had first really felt the downsides of my power. Lisanna had died. That is, Edolas Lisanna had died of a grave injury, suffered in a fall from a cliff where she landed wrong. And for a moment I had been able to feel that event through the Anima she had been close to.  
And Lisanna, my Lisanna, had gone. Pulled through the Anima to Edolas. In her place there was the corpse that the distraught siblings had tearfully identified as their sister. Identical in every respect to their own, except in a personality that they had not been able to discern anymore.

Young as I was, I hadn't been able to differentiate between the two of them. That, with the remaining Straus siblings eyewitness account and a body I hadn't been able to bring myself to look at...we had all believed her dead. When in truth the girl who had mothered me upon my first arrival to the guild almost four whole years ago had been alive and well. Here among Edolas Fairy Tail.

 _ **The Edolas guild hall only remained functional because she spent so much time inside of it, keeping it's ambient magic supply up.**_ And no one else would have been able to guess that was what she was doing, because their senses were restricted to the ordinary five. They wouldn't have been able to taste her power in the air, sense it like a cobweb drawn over your arm.

She was down there even now, wielding a magic sword.

And because she was planning on staying, on being Edolas Lisanna instead of coming home, she wouldn't use her magic even though she hadn't drawn on it in years and was almost brimming with untapped power. She wasn't coming back to Mira and Elfman. And because I would have done anything for her, I was so happy that she was alive...I wasn't going to say anything.

 _How can I ever face them again? Mira and Elfman?_ They still went and visited her grave like clockwork, once a week. They brought flowers, and spoke to her as if she was still with them. Updating her on all the guild business and newcomers. Their love for her had not ebbed with time, nor had the sting of her departure gotten any easier to bear.  
I hadn't even experienced it yet, and the guilt was already starting to eat at me.

Cubellios nosed my cheek, her tongue delicately lifting the tear from my face.

 **:Hatchling, you have smelt sad ever since setting eye on the young two leg who almost hears me.:**

 **:I am sad.:** I was over the moon that Fairy Tail had come through and not only picked me up, but had gotten me here. I could see Simon in a tower made of Gray's ice, magic circles in his hands as he directed grey mist around the ankles of the oncoming soldiers. Down below were everyone else. Erza was decimating the enemy forces, and that wasn't doing a lot for their morale to see 'Commander Knightwalker' tearing them to pieces. (I had heard some scream in terror that Knightwalker had been brainwashed by the Earthland Wizards and brought an imposter Prince Jellal back from the dead. Since the same guy also screamed about the incoming zombie apocalypse, I just chalked him up as an idiot instead of an observant sort of person.)

Gray had joined Lucy in weilding a spiked whip made of ice to compliment hers. They appeared to be herding soldiers together for Edo-Lucy and Loke to take out hand to hand. And Lucy was using her superior skills in that regard to disarm what soldiers she could to make it easier on their close combat fighters. I could also hear Loke taking the time to flirt with Edo-Lucy and getting shot down without mercy. Not that it seemed to phase him in the slightest.

 _What are the Celestial Spirits in Edolas like I wonder?_

Just to the side, I saw Edo-Juvia do a massive double take upon seeing Gray, my Gray. And a new ship popped up as she gave him a once over in interest that would have had my Juvia committing homicide.

 _Or maybe a strange kind of suicide...Does it still count as killing yourself if it's a you from another world?_

Judging by the aura of despair surrounding a heavily clothed Edo-Gray, he had noticed it too.

 _Oh man...What Earth Juvia wouldn't give to be here._

I shivered in spite of myself then as my thoughts drifted towards my...latest escapade in magic. Specifically, my Oiroke fiasco.

 _Now I need even more therapy._

To distract myself, I looked further ahead to where Mystogan and Jellal were fighting like twin whirlwinds. Since Jellal had been set up to pretend to be Mystogan, he had even worn the same clothing. And whatever Mystogan was doing with his spear was giving him a similar aura to Jellal's Grand Chariot, so they looked pretty much interchangeable. And they were moving so fast it was hard to discern between them.

 **:I can tell that you are sad, hatchling. But you have not said why.:**

Cubellios was apparently not going to let the matter go, so I looked back down at Lisanna, fighting between Edo-Mira and Edo-Elfman. Their stances were purely protective, they were doing absolutely everything to keep her safe.

 _They almost lost her once._

 _ **No. They did lose her. They know she is not their actual sister.**_

And they still loved her to that extent. Loved the sacrifice she made for them, adopting their Lisanna's mannerisms as much as she could, being the best, kindest sister she could be.

G2 informed me that Edo-Lisanna had been the wild child of the siblings here. Even a little bit of a brat to people around her, especially Edo-Natsu. _Do not touch that, it will only make me angry._

To have Lisanna come back with 'amnesia' from a head injury with an altered personality had been an acceptable story. And soon, people were so endeared by this 'changed' Lisanna, that they didn't question the gaps or hesitation that implicated her as a stranger to them. Natsu Dragion had gone from being tormented by the youngest Strauss to firmly defended by her against all others.

 _In short, going home is gonna hurt in ways I never wanted it to._

How was I supposed to look Mira in the eye after this, knowing what I did? That her baby sister was alive...and hadn't wanted to come home. That she wanted to stay dead to her.

 **:I keep too many secrets and can't seem to stop acquiring more.:**

The snake had no response to that save to shift her coils around me in a pseudo hug, offering her silent support.

 _ **Faust is going to be steering the Dorma Anim here.**_

With all the Earthland wizards gathered here, plus the biggest thorn in his side for the last seven years, Edolas Fairy Tail, Faust would not stop at anything if it meant getting to this side of our map and wiping us out.

 _Simon._ I had to tell Simon, Simon could get the word out without shouting over the noise.

And there was an entire battle field between us with no way of getting word to him either and I still couldn't use a spell to make myself fly until I got some power back.

 **:Can you fly? Just a little way. I need to get over there.:** I indicated Simon's tower stronghold. Cubellios let out a soft sigh, head falling in universal weariness to rest on my chest almost bonelessly.

 **:I will try to muster the strength, hatchling. A moment.:**

I left her to that, focusing on the battle that wasn't right in front of me. I was only getting a vague sense of building action and grave danger...

And something else. Like the swift approach of a mounting climax.

 _Ok, in this story the climax should already have come and gone. Dorma Anim is a pretty definitive climax in combat! So what am I missing that I can't see?_

G2 only showed me the image of a girl, racing through the currently empty streets, reddish brown hair and wearing royal livery. A messenger. And she looked utterly panicked.

 _Where is she coming from?_

 _ **The palace.**_

 _...Well good on her for getting past my traps._

A series of explosions from below drew my eyes back to the ground, Mystogan using yet another setting on his new spear to drive the enemy back and gain still more ground. The wizards around him having fallen into a steadily advancing arrow formation, with him and Jellal leading the way.

 _I want to look at that spear. Ten Commandments, ten different magical functions in one item!_ The ideas I could get from it would be revolutionary. For me at least. It might all be standard issue for some skilled magic smith. But they weren't about to share trade secrets with some kid.

 _Let's go meet her. See what she has to say._ I wouldn't get an idea of what had caused her so much panic until I interacted with her personally. And I didn't get any feeling that she was dangerous.

Then I heard a massive, earth shivering clang. The sound was distant. I turned and squinted over the distance towards the towering armored figure of Dorma Anim, starting to walk towards us.

 _But...The only way that would happen is if Natsu, Wendy and Gajeel were-_

I wasn't seeing any flying figures anymore.

I sat up, focusing my power deliberately this time. Concentrating on finding out what had happened to our Dragon Slayers.

 _ **Their partner's wings were singed, they have switched to ground based assault and sent the Exceed to safety.**_

-vVv-

Pantherlily had been a warrior all his life. He had seen the best of the best that Edolas had to offer, and had fought most of them himself, but these Dragon Slayers still astounded him.

Even the little girl outstripped them all for sheer grit as she got back up after being swatted like an insect. Teeth bared in an expression of utter determination, inhaling deeply, deliberately.

His whiskers twitched.

A feeling akin to observing an Anima was in the air. Something was departing from the air.

"C'mon! That all you got?!" The fiery one roared, beckoning challengingly at the monstrous armor which housed the man he had once called his king. Pantherlily had lost track of the one he had been assisting, he instead held the two smaller Exceed in his arms. They were young, he could see that right away. Likely from the generation Shagotte had sent through the Anima. But the blue one, the younger of the pair, didn't seem to be that bothered by his battle. Indeed, he had already almost completely recovered.

"I'm ok now. I can help!"

"Don't be a fool." Pantherlily said firmly. "If you and your friend are the only combatants in the air, you will draw all of Faust's fire!" The sky colored cat gave an almost cheeky grin and a salute that was completely cheeky.

"Aye sir! I know! We're counting on that!" Then he squirmed free from Lily's grasp, wings surging back into existence and flew towards Natsu. He picked him up with almost no lost momentum, and they both taunted Faust in tandem.

"You idiotic tomcat!" The white feline hissed, squirming as well, but not trying to escape. "You will get yourselves both killed!"

They called on, heedless of the danger, curving into a figure eight directly before the mouthpiece of the armor.

"Hey old man! How's things happening? You stopped rotting when they stuck you in that tincan?!"

"Eat seaweed, you greedy old moron! You need better eyesight to try and catch us!"

 _I cannot tell if their words stem from foolishness or bravery._

Faust's temper was usually curbed by the cabinet and the fact that he was usually unquestionably in control. He had been steadily losing both sources of restraint and patience over the last two days, culminating now in someone defying him to his face.

"They'll be alright." The girl straightened, some of her color restored after a moment to catch her breath though she was grimacing. "This place tastes weird..."

 _Tastes? What was she eating? She didn't have anything...?_

"Wendy, please don't tell me that you ate this horrible city air!" Carla sounded affronted, and now she did struggle. "You know how easily you get sick from doing that!"

"The only logical reason that I do...is because I'm too picky." She responded, drawing in still more lungfuls of air. "Natsu and Gajeel eat whatever they want of their element and it makes them stronger. They eat it even if it tastes horrible!"

" **Be silent you insects!"**

Faust swung and arm up and around, trying to smack the duo to the ground. But the blue Exceed was too adept a flier to let him so much as even come close.

"Too slow!" They chorused in obnoxious unison.

Compartments opened on one of his arms and airborne missiles were launched into the air. Bombs that chased them around relentlessly, slowly, steadily gaining ground...

But Faust's attention was entirely on the flying pair and not Pantherlily, Wendy or Carla.

"I need to get you both to safety."

"I'm not going anywhere." Wendy said stubbornly. "They're staying, so I am too. I'm their medic, my place is with them."

 _What is it with this guild that it inspires such absolute loyalty?_ Pantherlily wondered briefly. From the bickering he had observed between Gajeel and Natsu, they were not friends. But they had worked in tandem all the same. They put aside their differences to work towards a common goal: Defeating and ultimately dethroning his king for crimes committed against their family.

"Now!" Happy dropped Natsu onto Dorma Anim's arm, and he promptly started to run up it. Fire spewing from the human's fists propelled him forward far faster than anyone Pantherlily had ever seen move. The Exceed flew around the metal titan in the other direction, drawing off about half of the homing missiles. Natsu reached the helm of Dorma Anim at the same time as his partner reached the other side of it in his arc.

Then Happy snatched him and soared upwards at the very last minute.

Faust tried to dodge, but something arrested his movement from behind. Those missiles that didn't impact his own helm, slammed into each other, creating a rapid cascade of fire that enveloped the upper half of the armor. Armor that clearly wasn't meant to take it's own firepower.

Hands rested on his arm, another on Carla. Wendy's eyes gained an intense focus and he felt new magic trickle into his system, refreshing him and speeding up the healing process from the blows he had taken trying to protect his passenger from the bombs Happy and Natsu had just evaded with consummate ease.

"Oh my..." Carla said, sounding shocked. "I did not..."

"Fae says they've been partners since Happy hatched. And they started flying together almost right away." Wendy explained with a small smile. "Makes sense that they're such a good team, right?"

 _There are good teams, and then there is what I just saw._ Pantherlily was impressed with the duo. And now they appeared to be hovering above the inferno they had tricked Faust in hitting himself with, using the thermal to stay aloft more easily, and Natsu appeared to be inhaling-

The fire was disappearing.

"I thought he was the kind that spat fire."

"He eats it too. It's one of the first things our dragon parents teach us." Wendy said so nonchalantly that Pantherlily felt a strange sense of vertigo.

"Dragon Slayers have dragon parents?"

"It's kinda hard to explain, and we don't have a lot of time, but yes. We do."

"Save your strength for you allies, child, We're fine." Carla tried to push Wendy's healing touch off of her. Wendy just smiled and jerked her head towards Dorma Anim.

"So are they."

"Man that fire tastes nasty!" Natsu bellowed in complaint as Happy carried him down from above.

"Shpeak for yourshelf!" Gajeel's muted voice rose from behind Dorma Anim. Ducking down, Pantherlily say why Faust's attempt to dodge had been foiled.

Gajeel had gotten ahold of the dragon armor by the tail, planted his legs deep into the ground, literally stomping down through the stone cobbles, and was voraciously chewing through the priceless one of a kind magic armor like cheese.

 _Nothing makes sense anymore._

"Yeah yeah, hurry up! This guy's got a big old glaring weakness that no one ever picked up on 'cause they were too damn scared of it!" Natsu's grin was savage and sparks seemed to fly from his lips as he and Happy landed by Wendy and Pantherlily again.

"It still relies on the user's reflexes. And it's magic armor. Any magic we put into it, it'll throw right back at us. But if we take the magic out of what we're doing..."

"His own bombs seemed to work pretty well." Wendy observed.

Pantherlily would admit that the chest, helm and upper arms of the armor were glowing faintly and clearly were a little softer than they had been initially.

"You'd never get close enough without magic to do anything."

"I said we can't hit him with magic, not that we can't use any." Natsu looked down at Wendy, eyes glinting. "You ready, Wendy?" Faust had been trying to shake Gajeel off of his tail, moving the majestic armor in a rather wild fashion to try and shake off his unwanted passenger.

"Whatever you need."

" _Woah!"_

Pantherlily looked up sharply as Faust flicked his tail up and managed to dislodge Gajeel. He hurriedly released Carla and took flight to catch the Iron Slayer. In the process, he kicked back a hefty piece of shrapnel that had been sent flying when Gajeel's feet were literally ripped out of the ground.

"Kid was holding out on me! What's your name, kitty?" Pantherlily barely kept his fur from fluffing out in outrage.

"Pantherlily!"

"Well, Lily! You and me are gonna throw down after this! Dragon Slayer's gotta have talking cats. It's a rule, but I only take the best!"

Pantherlily considered the odds of winning an argument under these circumstances...and simply ended up dropping Gajeel with the others, rolling away sharply and covering his ears with his paws as Faust let out an amplified scream of rage. Everyone in Fairy Tail was insane, he was convinced of that. And one did not defeat insanity by letting it drive you mad as well.

As Pantherlily circled back, he saw the three wizards below spring into action. Wendy waved her hands over the pair of them speaking in a low fast voice. Auras sprang into being around the two young men. Then the blue cat descended and Wendy likewise cast a spell on him.

This time, when Natsu and Happy took to the sky, they were easily three times as fast as they were before. They harried Faust from all sides, like a bee teasing someone with the suggestion of whether or not they would be stung. Dorma Anim was bulky and powerful, but it was not meant to move quite that fast. The still soft metal joints began to seize up as the force with which Faust jerked them about began to bend them out of shape, slowing its reflexes.

Meanwhile, Wendy took to the ground again, ducking behind rubble as cover as she waited and watched intently. Gajeel raced around the side, taking full advantage of Natsu distracting Faust.

Within a minute, Gajeel was in position, directly in Faust's blind spot. Natsu, able to see both him and Wendy, grinned and then let out a raw throated yell that sounded far too much like a roar. A signal to act.

Gajeel drove a fist down through Dorma Anim's foot. Up past his elbow. Then the ground shuddered as he growled.

" _Iron Dragon Club!_ " From the sky, Pantherlily saw a round half foot stud of metal poke up out of the ground twenty feet away.

 _He's using a magic spell...but he's not enchanting it in any way to make it hit with extra power. He punched through metal until he breached its defenses. No spell, just muscle. He's literally nailing him down!_

Natsu and Happy were swooping around in a wide circle as Wendy was taking in massive gulps of air, fists clenched and straining against some unseen force. Like she was forcing herself to continue to draw breath.

Natsu and Happy were coming up directly behind her, and at the precise moment when Wendy released her spell, they were directly at it's head.

" _Sky Dragon Roar!"_

They had already been moving fast. But Pantherlily literally saw nothing for a moment. A low, unmistakable thunderclap was all he heard... And a hole appeared in Dorma Anim's chest plate. Pierced clean through. And a figure trailing fire impacted the ground on the far side of the metal titan. Natsu, clawing the ground and killing his momentum, but with a feral, satisfied grin on his face as he watched his enemy fall.

-vVv-

 _ **Dorma Anim is neutralized.**_

The report made me pause as I looked over the details eagerly.

Apparently, Dorma Anim had been made with the idea in mind to be as resistant as possible to magical damage. In Edolas, without an ethernano circulatory system, people just couldn't be strong or tough enough to rip through that much metal without some kind of magical enhancement.

So the crazy Dragon Salyers had decided to use their most basic advantage over other wizards.

Their supernatural toughness, even by our standards.

Wendy had cast an attack enhancement spell on Gajeel, a speed booster on Happy, and placed a defense enchantment on Natsu. With her enchantments taking the worst of the drain, the boys had been able to simply tear the massive armor apart.

Their plan had been simple.

Gajeel's magic was resilient and unmoving. He was the only one of the three of them with the raw power needed to keep Faust from moving. He was there to make sure he couldn't avoid them.

Happy was already a fast flier, and more than strong enough to fly Natsu just about any which way he might need. Wendy's spell made him even faster. All that speed translated into movement, which was in fact just raw energy.

Energy that translated directly to Natsu. While protected by Wendy's enchantment, he used his body like a ballistic human firepowered missle to tear right through the thick metal armor. Wendy's enchantment cocooning him was all that was being sapped. Dorma Anim couldn't get at his or Gajeel's magic to try and protect itself.

Faust had lost...because he relied on keeping his power and control. Keeping his enemies divided and unable to help one another. No wonder Edo Fairy Tail was enemy number one in his book!

 _ **The messenger is changing course to avoid a ruined street.**_

Right, focusing on the job. And right now, the job was to find that messenger girl from the palace and find out why she was freaking out so badly.

A bit more jumping and finangling, and I saw why she had been trying to take easy routes instead of simply going straight over obstacles.

She was running on bloodied legs with an open wound on her calf. A bite mark.

 _ **She has been poisoned.**_

A small timer popped into being over her head. All that running had probably spread the poison even further through her body. She had less than a minute left to live, but she had put her all into running to deliver her message.

I caught her, with Cubellios growing larger to support me in arresting her momentum. She shrank down again just as quickly to conserve energy.

I had developed this spell early on. But I had never used it on someone who was actually poisoned.

 _First time for everything...And she needs to live._ She looked to be about my age, her chest was heaving, eyes glassy as the toxin ravaged her body. I could see moments in her past as I held her, with each frantic beat of her heart, I saw things she had done. How happily, and loyally she had served Faust's regime, believing wholeheartedly that this was the best way life could go.

" _Esuna!"_

The magic poured from me, channeled through my memories of the countless stories set in Gaia which relied on this spell to magically purge poison from allies.

Allies. Not enemies.

 _You were against me...but you are not my enemy._

The slow down count of the timer stopped...then vanished altogether, a slow dream like fade. The brown haired girl would live.

"What was so important that you'd cut your life down to nothing like that?" I demanded of her. "Why were you running? What attacked you?" The questions were mostly superficial, but she could hear me, and that was all I needed. For her to think back over the events that had brought her here so I could tag along with them.

I saw her in the castle, hiding in a room with some servants. Saw her hesitantly peeking out when she saw a man-spider crawl into the castle on broken but still functioning limbs. Recognizing him as someone she knew, and being genuinely concerned for him...so she followed him. Byro. She knew his name was Byro.

She had listened to his mutters as she followed him on silent feet, bare feet making no noise. She was a bright girl, so she had pieced together what Byro was talking about to himself. It came in brief, sporadic flashes of thought and horror.

Activate the Code Jungle in all of his changelings, prompting them to transform. A full standing army of part human monsters. All under his command.  
From what I could glean, Code Jungle was meant for a situation...pretty much exactly like this. A powerful invading force that was overwhelming the armed forces and attacking the capitol city. Byro had gone among the soldiers who had been retired, or those exempt from the draft for one reason or another and had given them special injections. They were to be the last line of defense, transformed into creatures such as centaurs, minotaurs or similar part human beings. Replacing lost limbs, straightening and enhancing warped ones. They would be on an energy high and seeking for an enemy to fight until the all clear was given.

The thing was, all those people were trapped down in the shelters away from the fighting. They wouldn't see an enemy, but that wouldn't stop them from acting as if they did. They would turn on the people they saw, their families, women and children. In my mind's eye, I could see the locations of the shelters all throughout the city. Every single one had at least two people inside that would be changed by Code Jungle.

This was not a move to defend, this was genocide of the citizens of Faustian waiting to happen. And it wasn't all.

Byro was mad, but still cunning. Once Code Jungle was active, he meant to activate the Anima one last time, but in reverse. It would drain all magic from Edolas. If that happened, not only would Edolas Fairy Tail be left crippled, but Earthland Fairy Tail would be forced back home. With Faust dethroned, and the rest of his enemies unable to fight back, Byro would be the most powerful man in Edolas.

Coco's thoughts had revolved around one fact and one alone: Stop the madman from hurting her friends.

I saw her running, dodging and avoiding being caught in the webs. I saw her grab the key to the machine Byro had devised to activate Code Jungle. I saw her get bitten, but then also saw her repeatedly kick Byro in the face with the speed of a jackhammer until he was forced to release her.

 _Find Prince Jellal. He can help. Find...Prince Jellal._

And by Jellal, she meant Mystogan. I knew.

Then she had run through pain and growing delirium to the heart of the fighting through the abandoned city. No one around who could help her, so she pushed on...

I checked her over hurried, verifying she was alright as my mind spun.

Activating the reverse Anima had been in our plan all along. Or a back up plan at least. But if Byro got his way, then Edolas would have a swarm of new monsters to deal with and none of their previous advantages in fighting them. An evil man would run rampant over the already broken city, costing even more lives.

That...was unacceptable. And she had agreed. Coco had managed to avert the instant activation of the protocol. But it wouldn't last forever. Byro would be able to work around the absence of the key before too long, even in his maddened state.

I read that Coco had magic items. Subtle ones that she had been given years ago, that she had grown up using. Speed enhancers that let her run her messages more efficiently and easily as well as complete her duties as the Assistant Chief of Staff.

"I can tell the prince your message." I told her, glancing down at my leg, which still throbbed dimly. "But I will need to borrow your anklets to get it to him in time."

"Do it..." Coco breathed faintly, head lolling. "Want...my friends..."

Seeing that Sugarboy and Hughes were among the people she considered a friend, I laughed a little awkwardly.

"Well, they're...gonna be fine. With a bath...And possibly some counseling, because that sadist thing Hughes has going is not healthy for anyone." I said this lightly as I slipped offer Coco's anklets and slipped them onto my own legs. I could sense their power, but I also knew that trying to use an unfamiliar magic item tended to be very wasteful...

I had to be as good as Coco at using them if this was to have any long term benefit.

I hesitated for a moment, glancing at her.

 _As good as Coco at using them..._ She had years of practice with these things. They had been with her through a lot. Through everything. They would know how she brought out the best in them. I just needed to get them to share.

I pulled out a pen and scribbled a few runes on each anklet. Cubellios nosed around Coco, gently shifting her into a more comfortable position. Then she turned her head around, tongue flickering in the air...

She grew and smacked a section of her body down on the ground.

A hatch popped open and a face that was literally made of deja vu peered out.

My face.

On someone else.

We stared at each other for a few seconds before breaking out in wide grins and speaking in unison.

"Cooooool...I'm a badass!/I'm an urban ninja!"

Then we both giggled a little as Edo-me pulled herself out of the tunnel and peered anxiously at Coco.

"Is she ok?"

"She got herself poisoned pretty badly. But I got it out. She needs rest and water. And that bite has to be cleaned and patched up." I appreciated Edo-me so much when she saw that the bite marks I said had been poisoned had come from human teeth, and said nothing in that regard.

"Alright. I got her." She looked at me then, piercing me with uncanny blue eyes that I saw every time I looked in a mirror...but this time I had no idea what was being thought behind them.

"It's no wonder people get weirded out when we stare at them. Our eyes are cool." I remarked, finishing my runes on my borrowed anklets. We weren't identical. She had boy short hair, and had very boyish clothes too. And her eyes weren't glowing slightly like mine, just a very pale blue. But the same spirit and intelligence was in them. The same awareness of the world around us that others just didn't...get.

"Yeah, I thought it was just 'cause we were a kid. But it's actually all in the eyes...Or...mostly the eyes." She cocked her head as Cubellios shifted down as small as she could go and wound herself around my neck. We had been practicing a lot to help her get smaller. Just with getting more control over her life and body. Edo-me looked pensive and thoughtful for a moment before voicing her question.  
"Are you happy with them? With Fairy Tail?"

There didn't seem to be enough words or time to express everything I felt about that subject.

I exhaled, feeling the anklets wake up and hum with energy, eager to be used.

 _ **60% capacity.**_ Coco took good care of the items she had been entrusted with. My magic was already subtly reading their history, integrating the knowledge of how to maximize their efficiency despite my lack of experience.

"Yeah. I'm happy. I don't know much else, but I do know that what I have with them...what I have because of them, is good." I tested my still bruised leg, frowning briefly...

 _I'll have to risk it._

I bent down and placed my hand over the injury and whispered:

" _Ferula."_ Bandages appeared out of nowhere, binding it into a tight temporary splint and support. My kinetic recyclers would keep my running from doing much more damage to my body from the recoil.

"Bye Fae. Be happy." Edo-me's smile was bright, warm and sincere. I had a strange impulse to speak and just...got it out there.

"You know...Edolas Fairy Tail is different from my Fairy Tail...but...you should go talk to them." She nodded, slipping an arm under Coco and moving back towards the secret entrance. Which I realized was little more than a hidden manhole in the street.

 _ **She has always wanted to, but never had the chance.**_

I prayed as I began to move down the street at a jog, slowly increasing my speed, that Terra Fae would find her way home. I didn't doubt that just like Earthland Fairy Tail was my place, that Edolas Fairy Tail could be hers.

Once I had a feel for how the speedster anklets worked, I opened up and let myself move even faster. Every step I took fed energy back into the anklets thanks to the runes I had drawn to connect them to the bands I always wore.

It felt exhilarating to be able to move after being hampered, even for a short time.

 _Who can get back to the palace fast enough to stop Byro?_

 _ **Edo-Jet, Erza in Speed Armor, Jellal using Meteor and Mystogan with Silfarion. Byro can still activate Code Jungle, it just takes a bit longer.**_

Well, it was a no brainer who I would ask.

I chalked it up to being practiced at deciphering what I was saying when I rattled off the update to Mystogan at top speed and he understood me right away. Ten Commandments shifted into its speed enhancing form and he started to run for the palace. And for once, I managed to keep pace with him when he was trying to move fast.

The fight we left behind was an unquestionable victory for Fairy Tail. The Dragon Slayers had been triumphant against their titan-like enemy. They had even managed to keep Faust alive. But Byro was the issue now. Byro and his plan.

I grabbed Mystogan by the hand and guided him through the booby-trapped areas that fleeing soldiers either hadn't tripped or were self resetting. I may have even run along some walls. Mystogan did too. _I love it when physics are just suggestions!_

My heart was racing wildly. And with more than just the adrenaline of the run. Something was going to happen. Something was coming on the next page that I couldn't see and probably wouldn't like. The sensation of trepidation and climax was building in a twisting, uncertain kind of terror in my gut. It almost felt like it was physically weighing me down.

 _ **Maximum magic expenditure reached. Activating emergency survival shut down.**_

 _Oh... that's what that feeling was._

My limbs spasmed and I tripped hard. Moving at my speed meant that it hurt when I fell. I managed to twist and land on my side, minimizing the impact. My good side, so I didn't actually break my leg when I fell on it. Cubellios hissed in a decidedly unhappy tone, writhing out from under me. I didn't understand her.

"Fae!" I could hear Mystogan braking, turning back-

"Go!" I managed to get out, feeling my magic circulatory circle start to close off the unseen ports that let my magic seep out of me and interact with the world around me. It left me feeling uncomfortably blind. I ran a hand down Cubellios's back.

"Sorry girl...can't keep the Parseltongue spell up...Gotta pantomime for a while." I curled up on the floor, feeling a strange, uncomfortably cold sensation start to creep up my limbs. My face felt hot where it had been bruised on the ground. My hands and feet were freezing and all sound was a bit weird in my ears. Cubellios in her small form shifted around me, nosing my head onto the other side and laying her cool scales against the bruise.

 _Just breathe._ I reminded myself. _Conserve energy. It'll generate some more in just a few minutes to regulate._ It didn't make the helpless feeling any easier to cope with. I just prayed Mystogan would finish up with Byro quickly. My head...my head hurt so much...

-vVv-

Mystogan's hesitation when Fae had fallen had been mere seconds.

Very costly seconds.

He had calibrated the Anima to reverse it's last harvest from Earthland and let it go back, replacing everything exactly where it had been. Byro however, seemed to have been busy. The new settings, just as Fae had warned him, would drain all magic from Edolas. Byro himself had certainly looked better before his transformation and his work over at Gray's hands. _Gray must have not finished him off to go stop Erza from overheating after blocking the Dragon Roar._ He was limping on mangled spider limbs, slavering and semi mindless with pain and with blood and venom dripping down from his mouth. But his eyes retained a spark of lucidity when he saw Mystogan.

"Welcome to your future kingdom, my prince!" He cackled, bowing mockingly. "A kingdom without magic!"

 _He's already done it._ Anima had been activated. All magic was going to drain out of Edolas, sending what was taken back to where it belonged, and pulling all the Exceed and the lingering magic power in the land and air with it.

"How proud you must be-"

" _Gravity Core."_ Ten Commandments shifted in his hand, the sensation of the magic fuel powering it moving a little more erratically than normal. It would be little more than a useless prop in a few minutes. Mystogan focused the area of empowering gravity directly around Byro, letting his control open up and bring the drider to the ground with a crash and crack of shattering exoskeleton.

"Your words were poisonous long before you did this to yourself." Byro wasn't moving anymore. He was very clearly not in his right mind. It would almost be kinder of Mystogan to put him down before he lost what remained of his human thought. He dropped the priceless magic weapon that was already being drained of its power and ran back to Fae.

Cubellios was shifting around her, trying to comfort her as her body shivered, looking small and fragile on the ground. The snake shifted to coil around her neck when Mystogan picked her up.

"Fae?" Her eyes were only opened to slits and she flinched into him.

"Hurts..." She muttered into his cloak. He hastily felt her hands, noting she was freezing. He hauled off his cloak and wrapped it around her.

"I know, looks like it does. That was a nasty fall." She shook her head, eyes squeezing shut.

"Not the face...barely feel it. Head...Head hurts..."

His stomach dropped with horror.

 _Her lacrima._

It was like he had speculated before. Fae could not be drawn back through the Anima like the rest of them. She had to be carried through otherwise she would not survive the journey. The magic in the lacrima would leave her body. She was used to a higher level of overall magic in her system, magic she hadn't earned naturally. AMD, Abrupt Magic Drain, would kill her with no chance of survival. He had to get her back, now!

Mystogan scrabbled for his air staff-

It was already empty. It hadn't had much left and it was drained by the gradual upshift of magic. Golden streamers of power were drifting through the air, converging on a point in the sky and vanishing through the Anima, back to the world it had originally come from.

"Cubellios. Can you-?" Desperation rang in his voice. The snake lifted her head in response and he fell silent in despair. The normally bright green eyes of the snake were dull, tired. She was as exhausted as Fae had been. She had been moving, flying, fighting everything alongside the girl.

That hope was gone.

 _No...No, there has to be some way!_

Mystogan lifted them both, running back to Ten Commandments. If he transferred it's remaining power back into his Air Magic staff, it would give him enough power to get them back through the portal to Earthland.

He grabbed the spear and froze in horror.

"Mystogan?" Fae sounded worried, hand lifting out from his cloak and patting his chest. "What's wrong?"

 _Everything._

Using Gravity Core against Byro so close to the Reverse Anima had drained the Ten Commandments of it's remaining power.

It wasn't supposed to have ended like this. He was supposed to go home with his guild, and remain Mystogan forever. Watch his friends go on to achieve their dreams. Derive endless amusement from people wondering at his 'incredible magic reserves'. Listen to all of Fae's stories. Live her story with her.

So...for the first time since he knew her. Mystogan lied to Fae.

"I'm just...tired, Fae. You'd better go to sleep. You'll get more magic back if you rest." The words wanted to choke him. But they didn't manage, the tears he was fighting down already had..

"Can't...Hurts too much. Want it to go'way..." Fae's vocabulary reverted to something more expected of her age when she was tired. It had been a trait that he found endearing and amusing. Especially when she tried to maintain it and ended up switching words or jumbling them.

"I'll help you sleep." That token, a small wand he kept in his pocket, was still full. Or it should have been prior to Reverse Anima. He had stopped using it on the guild after Fae adopted him as her friend. It still had barely enough of a charge to it to work. But he had to use it quickly.

"Stupid wand..." Fae muttered, not even her headache keeping her mind from working and realizing what he was talking about.

"It will help you get to sleep...even with...the headache." His fingers brushed over the spot in her head where he knew the lacrima rested. Her body was fighting the drain, trying to keep it in. Entering an instinctive shut down mode to prevent it's departure. Buying her precious minutes.

"M'kay." She consented quickly, trusting him completely, eyes falling shut and curling into him.

Mystogan's throat was tight even as he gripped the short wand in his pocket, letting the spell drift out and wrap around her. Fae was out within seconds without her will to keep her awake. Her breathing was steady and quiet. If she was going to go...she would not go afraid.

 _Goodbye Fae._

He drew her in close, arms trembling. Before he broke down completely though, he heard the distinctive sound of wings and his head snapped up.

"Mystogan!" Natsu and Happy were descending from the sky. "They said you and Fae were- What happened?" Natsu's grin vanished in an instant when he saw Fae motionless in Mystogan's arms.

"Byro. You need to get her back to Earthland, now. She's-" He couldn't even make himself say it. He thrust her at Natsu's arms. "Get her home. Quickly."

"We'll be back for you-"

"No, you won't. The portal will be closed by then. Just go, take her and go!" The longer he had to look at her the more it would hurt. But why couldn't he look away then? Why couldn't he stop imagining what she would be like grown up? What childhood traits would fade and what would remain? Who was the poor bastard who would try and flirt with her first? How tall would she end up being?

"You're not leaving the guild." Natsu had set his feet on the ground and handed Fae to Happy, whose tail was poofed out in obvious distress as he looked her over, whiskers trembling.

"Never!" Mystogan didn't want that. It was all he would have left. "Don't you- Just take her and fly, she only has minutes left!"

Fae's head rolled limply, her eyes open and glowing. A voice sounded even though her lips didn't move.

" _Request: Message for Fae before departure."_

Not even the urgency of the situation could make Mystogan blow past this. This was the first time Fae's inner voice had manifested in the open.

"What the hell?" Natsu had no such compunction. "Who are you?" he managed to pinpoint that the voice was coming from Fae's body but-

 _."Designation: G2.0. Purpose: Manage and organize the magic and memories of Celeste D. Faerun."_ The voice was the strange voice that Fae utilized in her narrative storytelling, but devoid of all emotion. After a brief hesitation, it continued. _"Expanded purpose: safeguard the happiness of Celeste D. Faerun."_ With each word, the voice became a little less mechanical and added a little more feeling. _"Purpose implies desire, and desire requires identity."_ G2.0 paused again, this time seeming thoughtful. _"I name myself: Morgana, Guardian Spirit of Celeste D. Faerun."_

This declaration seemed to echo in the air for a brief moment, settling into place as concrete **fact.** Then Fae's head rolled forward, and her eyes, glowing more brightly than ever, focused on Mystogan.

 _"Time grows short. This parting will devastate Fae. Please...don't let her leave without being able to have some kind of goodbye. I will record whatever you wish to say to her in her memories."_

Mystogan knew he only had a few minutes and he wanted to be as succinct as possible to get her to safety fast...

So where were all those words now?

"Fae...I'm sorry." He ruffled her hair for the last time, feeling the tears start to slide out. "I didn't want this. I wanted to come home with everyone. But it's my job to look after you. And that means...I have to stay here so you can live. So go home for me. Grow up, be amazing for the rest of your life. I'll miss you for the rest of mine." He tugged one stubborn lock of hair by her face. "I love you, Fae."

Morgana made Fae's eyes blink once before resuming their vacant staring.

" _Memory capture successful."_ She sounded sad as well. " _Fae has no father, and I barely recall mine. But we are glad that we could have you in our lives."_ Eyes the color of magic fluttered closed. A color he would never see again.

" _Goodbye, Mystogan."_

 **A/N**

If it is any consolation, I cried while writing this.


End file.
